Biographies: Mc / Mac / M

Biographies

Free Church Ministers and Others

Mc / Mac / M

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 Rev. John Macalister

Author: Rev. D. M. MacAlister, Kennoway
Source: Disruption Worthies of the Highlands , page 169

The subject of this short sketch was born at Kilpatrick in the island of Arran, where his father, Donald Macalister, occupied one of the Duke of Hamilton’s farms. The year of his birth was 1789, and in the same year his father died, leaving the infant boy and a sister to the care of the widowed mother, Isabella Mackinnon, who (experiencing the fulfilment of the divine promise) was enabled to act wisely and faithfully in the upbringing of her fatherless children. She lived to enjoy the comfort of seeing her son an ordained minister of the everlasting gospel, having been spared until the year 1831, as we learn from the inscription which he caused to be put on his parents’ tombstone. As soon as he was able to assist in the care of the farm, he did so with great assiduity; but, down to the year 1813, he was an unconverted man. The Lord, however, had need of him, and in that year He called him effectually by his grace, bringing him to the saving knowledge of the truth during the wide-spread awakening known as the Arran Revival, under the clear and discriminating ministry of the Rev. Neil McBride, minister of the parish of Kilmorie, within the bounds of which his mother’s farm was. Soon after his conversion, he felt constrained to engage in preparing himself for the work of the holy ministry. Having, however, only received in his early years the usual education given in the parish school, he now repaired to Kilmarnock for the initiatory study of the classics; and afterwards to the Glasgow University, where he completed his literary and theological curriculum. To all his studies he devoted himself with surpassing diligence, as his class notes and essays and his hall sermons amply prove. There were many precious results of the great work of grace in Arran to which we have referred, and not the least of these was the large number of faithful ministers given to the Church of Christ. It is sufficient to mention the names of Angus Macmillan (who succeeded Mr McBride at Kilmorie), the brothers Finlay and Archibald Cook, Peter Davidson, and Archibald Nicol. But amongst them Mr Macalister was indued with a character altogether his own. Having been licensed by the Presbytery of Glasgow in the early part of the year 1824, he was very soon thereafter selected by the Rev. Dr Love, of Anderston Chapel (whose ministry he attended while a student), to be his assistant; and during the short period in which he occupied this sphere his ministry was greatly prized. But the chief desire of his heart all along was, to have opportunity given to him by the great Head of the Church, to preach in his own mother tongue “the unsearchable riches of Christ.” He therefore willingly consented, at the earnest desire of the people of Glenlyon, Perthshire, to become the first minister of the Parliamentary church newly erected in that district, to which charge he was accordingly ordained in the autumn of the same year 1824. This became, perhaps, the most fruitful of the various fields in which he was called to labour. Here the Lord mightily honoured and prospered his servant in his work – great multitudes flocking long distances, Sabbath after Sabbath, to attend his ministry. The blessed effects of his teaching and pastoral superintendence in this district still remain, and they evidence themselves in a variety of ways. It is impossible, even at this remote period, for any discerning Christian to pass through that wonderful glen without discovering what a sweet savour of Christ John Macalister was to many. There are still alive some of those who waited upon his ministrations, and who speak with a holy enthusiasm of these early years of Mr Macalister’s ministry, one of those being that devoted and much honoured servant of Christ, the Rev. David Campbell, minister of the Free Church, Lawers, who, himself a native of Glenlyon, afterwards succeeded to that charge.* Whilst in Glenlyon, Mr Macalister married Margaret, eldest daughter of John Cuthbertson of Over Carswell, Neilston, and merchant, Glasgow, by whom he had two sons. She survived till the year 1873, when she died in her son’s house, the Free Church manse of Kennoway, Fifeshire. In December 1831, Mr Macalister was translated to the onerous charge of the Gaelic Church congregation, Edinburgh, where, in addition to his arduous ministerial work, he did much for the advancement of the cause of Christ throughout the Highlands and Islands in his capacity as one of the Secretaries of the Gaelic School Society; as also in his revising and correcting the proof sheets of a new edition of the Gaelic Scriptures then being prepared for the press, and in other kindred labours. A number of his Edinburgh hearers still survive, who retain a sweet savour of his preaching and labours in connection with the old Gaelic chapel, situated on the north side of the University, and only recently removed to accommodate city improvements. One of these members of his congregation there – Mr John Macdonald, the respected treasurer for the Free Church of Scotland – writes as follows:- “Mr Macalister was a clear, methodical, doctrinal preacher; and his appeals to the consciences of his hearers, founded on the doctrine he had been unfolding, were very powerful and telling. After the lapse of forty years, I still remember the powerful effect produced by a discourse from Hebrews 10:14: ‘For by one offering he hath perfected for ever them that are sanctified.’ And also another sermon, from the words (1 Cor. 6:11), ‘And such were some of you,’ &c. Mr Macalister’s great friend in the ministry was the late Peter McBride of Rothesay, who generally assisted him at communion seasons; and they very much resembled one another in the character of their preaching. I am sorry I cannot enlarge as much as I would like, for I was greatly indebted to your father’s preaching in the days of my youth.”

In May 1837, Mr Macalister was presented by the Crown to the parish of Nigg, Ross-shire , in response to a petition forwarded by the parishioners. In this charge, where he was greatly beloved and esteemed, he continued zealously to prosecute his abundant labours until the memorable period of the Disruption in May 1843. He nobly bore his part in the Non-intrusion controversy, alongside of such men as Mr Stewart of Cromarty, Mr Carment of Rosskeen, Mr Matheson of Kilmuir, Mr Campbell of Tarbat (lately of Lawers), Mr Mackintosh of Tain, and others. He was one of the ministers appointed by the General Assembly of 1842 to preach within the bounds of the Presbytery of Strathbogie; and, in connection with this self-denying service, he received a number of letters (still preserved) from unknown correspondents, gratefully acknowledging how largely his preaching in that district had been blessed to the good of souls.

Mr Macalister was said to have been the first who publicly unmasked the errors of Morisonianism, which were (during the time of his ministry at Nigg) being introduced and sown broadcast within the bounds of Tain Presbytery by Mr Morison himself, then a young preacher, and supplying the pulpit of a United Secession congregation in that quarter. Many were for a time led away from the truth of the gospel by that delusive doctrine; and one of these, lately deceased, repeatedly expressed to Mr Macalister his gratitude for the deliverance which he had been made the blessed means of working in his behalf. When the close of the ten years’ conflict in the Old Kirk of Scotland drew near, Mr. Macalister took an intelligent and active part in the proceedings of the Convocation, and other meetings which preceded the final disruption of the Church; and when at length the great crisis arrived, he resolutely, and at no small sacrifice of temporal advantages, followed the call of his divine Master to arise and depart, not knowing whither this step might lead. In the near prospect of the heavy trial that awaited him, he gave expression to his strong faith and courage in a letter to a friend, in the following terms:- “Nigg Manse, 27th February 1843. The present position of the venerated and scriptural Church of Scotland is dark and painful, but ‘the Lord liveth.’ I do not attempt to conceal that I feel for myself and my family, for not to feel in such circumstances would be inconsistent with the obligations of a Christian husband and father; and to say that I do not feel would therefore be mere hypocrisy. I have already been for about twenty years a preacher and minister in the Church of Scotland, and I may say that I am now becoming old and grey-headed, and my health has been weakened and injured in warning sinners to flee from the wrath to come, and inviting and directing them to come to the cross of Christ. But, my dear friend, while I thus feel for myself and family, I can truly say that I feel more for my nation and its rulers. If the Legislature now, instead of granting relief to the majority of our Church, sanction the proceedings of the civil courts, the nation will, in my opinion, be guilty of the sin of denying the right of the Lord Jesus Christ to rule in his own Church through her office-bearers, according to the constitution of the Protestant Presbyterian Church of Scotland, as laid down in her Standards, these being recognised, sanctioned, and secured by various Acts of Parliament, and by the Treaty of Union. Such a violation of the constitution of our Church I regard as a great and heinous sin – a sin for which, sooner or later, the nation must suffer.

“So great is my estimation of the benefits of such a religious establishment as the Church of our fathers, founded upon and in accordance with the Word of God, that neither the opinions nor the influence of any party whatever could induce me to leave her communion; but if the spiritual jurisdiction in Christ’s kingdom on earth is to be subjugated to the civil authority, as has been lately decided by the Court of Session, and confirmed by the House of Lords, then I shall have no alternative but either to leave the Established Church, however dear to me, or to deny my Lord and Saviour’s right to rule over his own house, and thus break my ordination vows, whereby I have more than once solemnly promised to maintain the doctrine, government, and worship of the Church of Scotland, as laid down in her Confession of Faith, and other Standards.”

When, in May 1843, Mr Macalister had to bid a final farewell to the parish church of Nigg, with its beautiful manse and glebe, his numerous congregation, with the exception of six or seven individuals, all adhered to the principles of the Free Church. A barn, kindly granted by Mr James Taylor of Nigg, was speedily fitted up as a temporary place of worship and in it he officiated during the remaining period of his ministry in that parish.

About this time Mr Macalister was appointed by the General Assembly’s Committee to proceed to Inveraray, for the purpose of organising the Free Church congregation there. In the performance of this duty he had to continue his labours for several weeks; and, upon his return to Nigg. the Inveraray congregation immediately forwarded to him an urgent requisition to become their pastor. The acceptance of this call was strongly pressed upon him by his most intimate friend, the Rev. Peter McBride of Rothesay (nephew to the Rev. Neil McBride, Arran), and also by the Rev. Dr Mackintosh Mackay of Dunoon; but he could not see his way clear to entertain it. In the course of his work at Inveraray he was thrown from a gig, receiving serious internal injury, from which, as was believed, he never fully recovered. But notwithstanding this, he continued his labours amongst his people, taking little or no rest. Ere long two calls were presented to him from his native island of Arran – the one to the new Free Church at Shiskan, and the other to the Free Church at Brodick, representing the parish of Kilbride. The latter of these two calls he felt constrained for various reasons to accept – one being that he feared the work of the Lord, under his ministry at Nigg, was not prospering so greatly as he had hoped and desired. From the time of his serious accident he felt as if he had the sentence of death in his frame; and a strong desire possessed him to spend his closing days, if the Lord should so order it, in the same island where he had received the beginnings of all the life, temporal and spiritual, of which he had ever been possessed. He was accordingly inducted, in the month of May 1844, by the Presbytery of Kintyre, into the charge of the Free Church, Brodick; the service being conducted in that beautifully-situated place of worship, still to be seen, not very far from Brodick Castle, at the foot of the road leading up to what is called “The String.” The late Duke of Hamilton and his duchess, having a great regard for Mr Macalister, allowed the Free Church congregation to continue in possession of this building so long as he lived. But his course on earth was now nearly finished – his ministry in Arran having lasted only seven months. He died on the 17th day of December 1844, in the fifty-sixth year of his age. His death took place at Glasgow, in the house of Mr Craig his nephew, whither he had gone a short time before, along with Mrs Macalister, to see their boys, who, having lately been sent to school there, had taken fever. He was only ill for a few days, with inflammation, supposed to have been one of the latent effects of the Inveraray accident. His remains were interred in the churchyard of Clachan, Shiskan, beside those of his father and mother. His beloved friend, Peter McBride, preached the funeral sermon from Matt. 23:37: “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that killest the prophets,” &c.

In personal appearance and mental configuration, Mr Macalister may be said to have been “every inch a soldier” – firm, steady, vigorous, clear, decided. His very step, it has been often remarked, was full of character. His manner bore a strong resemblance to that of Dr Love, whom he greatly venerated – a peculiar gravity and solemnity marking everything he said and did; and, as one remarked of him, “you could tell he was a man of God by the reverence with which he took His name into his lips.” Mr Macalister was an admirable Gaelic scholar, and wrote out carefully his Gaelic as well as his English sermons, although he never used manuscript in the pulpit. His sermons were remarkable for their always being textual, logical, concise, direct, eminently scriptural, and sound, both doctrinally and experimentally. When a student he always carefully read and examined both sides of a controverted point, and then firmly took up and defended his position. It would hardly be correct to say that he lived and died without having an enemy – his motives and conduct being too pure, straightforward, and Christ-like for that. But he was greatly beloved by the honest and true-hearted, whilst he was feared and avoided by men of crooked ways (whether in the church or the world), because these he unsparingly exposed.

Although, in point of duration, his ministry at Brodick was very short, it had many seals, not only amongst the natives, but also among the summer visitors from Edinburgh, Glasgow, and other parts of Scotland, as well as from England. Many of these were unknown to him while he lived, but several of them have since followed to where he now is, to be his crown and rejoicing in the day of the Lord. We close by giving, first, a few sentences from the notice of him which appeared at the time in the Scottish Guardian, written by Peter McBride; and next, the inscription on his tombstone, from the hand of the same discerning and loving friend:- “Mr Macalister was certainly no ordinary man. Possessed of a clear understanding and sound judgment, and great decision and energy of character, he was naturally fitted to exercise much influence in any course he might follow. He was an able and well-instructed divine, a powerful and energetic preacher, a faithful pastor, and zealous in the things which concern the welfare of the soul. Such a ministry was not left without seals of the approbation of the Lord in the various places where he was called in providence to labour. His labours were blessed to many, and his removal from them is felt to be a severe loss, not only to his family and those under his ministry, but to the Church at large.

“In private he was remarkable for affection; and his whole conduct was such as to command a high regard from all who valued and loved the gospel, or who could discern the true ministers of Christ. ‘Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord from henceforth: Yea, saith the Spirit, that they may rest from their labours; and their works do follow them.’

“In memory of the Rev. John Macalister, a faithful and zealous minister of the gospel of free grace, at Glenlyon from 1824 to 1831, at Edinburgh from 1831 to 1837, when he was removed to the parish of Nigg, and continued there till 1844, having, for the sake of Christ’s truth, left the Established Church at the Disruption in May 1843. He was inducted as minister of the Free Church parish of Kilbride, in this his native island, 29th May 1844, and was called to his eternal rest on the 17th December following, in the fifty-sixth year of his age, and twenty first of his ministry. He was a workman that needed not to be ashamed, and was much honoured in his Master’s work. Blessed is that servant which his Lord when he cometh shall find so doing.”

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 Rev. Murdo Macaskill

Author: The Editor
Source: The Monthly Record of the Free Church of Scotland, December, 1903, page 194

Passed away on 12th November. Perhaps there were no sadder hearts when the news appeared than those of many of his old friends in the Free Church. Mr. Macaskill‘s public career suggests nothing so much as the broken column. In many respects highly gifted alike as a thinker and a speaker, his best work was done as a pastor in Glenlyon and Greenock. In the latter place many who had spiritual discernment were at the beginning of his ministry to be found. The tradition of MacBean, Macrae, and the sweet memory of him whom the Highlanders lovingly styled “Young Kennedy” were still fresh, and no man with spiritual life could be unconscious of its presence. When he was transferred to Dingwall to succeed the Master in Israel who had made that town famous, Mr. Macaskill made the fatal mistake of supposing that he was cut out for the post of an ecclesiastical leader. His essays in that character for a time promised well, but ere the events of 1890-93 had passed from the region of living controversy Mr. Macaskill’s power was gone. The writer cherishes a warm regard for Mr. Macaskill’s memory, a clear impression of the first sermon he ever heard him preach, and an undying regret that a career which promised so fair should have closed so sadly. The Mr. Macaskill who stormed so strenuously against the legislation of 1892 and then swallowed it all and much more in 1900, he would seek to forget. The Mr. Macaskill who preached so zealously of sovereign grace and justifying righteousness, of an efficient atonement, and a regenerating Spirit, he will ever seek to remember. Till the day break and the shadows flee away.

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 Francis Macbean, Fort Augustus

Author: J. M. [perhaps Principal John Macleod]
Source: The Monthly Record of the Free Church of Scotland, January, 1930, page 14

Sıxty years make a great change in a country. More than a whole generation passes away in that time; and those who at its beginning were but children, are, before it comes to an end, near the Psalmist’s allotted span. It is now just over sixty years since Mr Macbean of Fort Augustus finished his course on earth. He was a native of Lochaber, being born at Corpach in the parish of Kilmallie. His birthplace is hardly more than a stone-throw from the railway station. It is on the upper side of the highroad. His father Donald Macbean, who is buried in Kilmallie, belonged to the high country near Inverness. He was a teacher, and his son in early life was his successor. Francis, who was born about the year 1794, grew up a tall, strong, and handsome young man. While still a youth he came to be seriously concerned about the salvation of his soul. This was soon after the beginning of Gospel days in Kilmallie. These were the days of the early ministry of Donald MacGillivray at Fort William and in Kilmallie. Mr MacGillivray was Mr Macbean’s near kinsman.

By an interesting chain of circumstances Mr MacGillivray was permitted to labour in what, twenty years later, became his parish. Before Duncan Macintyre, who was of the “Moderate” school, became minister of Kilmallie there was a prolonged vacancy in the charge. During that vacancy Mr MacGillivray occupied the pulpit. Lochiel would have presented him, but his right as patron was successfuly challenged. The law’s delays are proverbial. But in this case they were over-ruled for good, and while Mr MacGillivray was allowed to labour in the vacancy, the evangel that he preached began to bear fruit in wild Lochaber. Some of the Haldane preachers had worked there even earlier, but the first definite impression made by the Gospel was under the preaching of Donald MacGillivray. He was himself the first of his race to break away from the Scottish Episcopal tradition that had prevailed in his native Dunmaglass, the seat of the MacGillivrays, and he was followed by most of his kinsfolk. He was a mighty evangelical witness wherever he laboured.

I
Before the work that began in Mr MacGillivray’s early days came to an end, Francis Macbean felt the arrest of the word of God. He came into deep waters. When thus exercised and oppressed in soul he went to see Duncan Cameron of Achnaharrie, in Glenloy, who was one of the early evangelicals, and it was in his house that the future Boanerges first tasted of the comfort of the Gospel. Serious concern for the salvation of the soul was still such a rare thing in those parts that the news went through the countryside that the fine lad from Corpach, the teacher’s son, was out of his mind. Some time after he came to the light he had occasion to visit one of the out-of-the-way glens of Lochiel’s country, which even then were stripped of their old inhabitants, for in the first few years of the nineteenth century the clearance of Loch Arkaig and its glens took place, and the descendants of the old strain of Lochaber folk are to be found in Cape Breton and further west, where many of the exiles settled. In this glen Mr MacBean was asked the news of the country, and in particular anxious inquiries were made for the poor lad who had lost his senses. He was able to tell his hosts that the lad had now to his right mind.

In those early years of his life tradition tells of a journey that he took on foot to Communion services likely in Ross-shire. On his way he met with hospitable entertainment, but insisted on conducting family worship where it was not in use. In one case of this his hostess came under lasting impressions of saving truth, and of her own accord suggested that he should have worship again in the morning before he went on his way. It used to be said that in his youth no more handsome Highlander than he passed through the town of Inverness. While his father was still alive he became his successor as teacher, but in due course he set about studying for the ministry of the Gospel.

Those were the days when the Gaelic Schools’ Society was doing its remarkable work in diffusing the knowledge of the Bible in the Northern and Western Highlands and Islands. The leading spirits in setting this Society on foot were James Haldane, Dr Stuart of Dunearn, Dr M’Crie, and Christopher Anderson. By the time the Society was ten years old Mr MacBean was already its trusted agent and representative. In autumn 1821 he was sent, as superintendent and inspector, to visit the whole field in which the Society was operating. In the report which announces his appointment it is said that in that autumn he had already traversed most of the Islands, and had furnished the Committee, by means of a journal and regular private correspondence, with a mass of important information. It would be of interest if this report of his could be found and published. The work he thus did gave him an opportunity of forming an acquaintance with his country and his countrymen that was almost unique.

It was in those years that the flood-tide of the Evangelical Revival was flowing over the Northern Hebrides, and, owing to his work in those parts, Mr MacBean was brought into close touch with the beginnings of evangelical life in Lewis and Skye. Few men were better acquainted than he with the virtual heathenism that prevailed in those parts until the Gaelic Scriptures were translated, circulated, and read. What he knew of the workings of Moderatism and Patronage affected him so much that he turned aside from his intention to study for the ministry of the Established Church. Dr McCrie was in those times a tower of strength among the old Seceders. His Lives of Knox and Melville dealt with the early heroic days of the Reformed Church in Scotland. They recalled his generation to the knowledge and appreciation of the worthy contendings of our Reformers. Mr MacBean came under McCrie’s spell and associated himself with the branch of the Secession to which he belonged; and he was then ordained to do Home Mission work in the regions of the Highlands and Islands which were most destitute spiritually. In this office he laboured, in particular in Harris, Sunart, and his native Lochaber.

II
When he was in Harris Mr MacBean celebrated the Lord’s Supper among his followers, and in keeping with the practice of the old Seceder ministers he had Communion tokens struck, with his name on them as minister, and the inscription, “But let a man examine himself”. The tokens were in Gaelic, and quite likely these are the only Gaelic tokens that were ever struck. In the course of the Bracadale Case against Mr Roderick Macleod, Mr MacBean was reckoning in having him with him in the communion in Harris. Unexpectedly, however, the case was decided in Mr Macleod’s favour. So it was not until after the Disruption that Mr Roderick was free to do the work in Harris and Uist, and parts of Skye, that has left his name so fragrant in his extended field of labour.

After the death of Dr McCrie difficulties arose between Mr MacBean and the Synod whose Home Missionary he was. So for a few years before the Disruption Mr MacBean was in the employment of the Seaforth Estates, in making roads and building schoolhouses in Lewis. His home was then in Cromwell Street in Stornoway, and wherever he went in that extensive island he was free to exercise his ministry as a preacher of the Gospel. One of the most judicious of the early Christians of Lewis used to say that the many discourses that he heard from Mr MacBean in those years on the Song of Songs, were the most remarkable he had heard throughout his life on that mystical book of Scripture. When he was at home in Stornoway his house used to be crowded morning and evening, when he held family worship. One worthy Christian woman used as often as she could to walk four miles each way to attend his worship. The Word was precious in those days.

When the Disruption took place Mr MacBean was at one with the witness of the Free Church, and at once he threw in his lot with it. Very soon after he was settled at Fort Augustus, to minister there and at Glenmoriston. At the Disruption Mr Lauder of Invergarry, who came out, was called to Strachur and went there. It was in succession to him that Mr MacBean was settled, and Fort Augustus instead of Invergarry became the seat of the congregation. In building churches and manse Mr MacBean was indefatigable. He was a capable business man and he found plenty to do. He was a hard worker and he did not let others take things easy. As an educationist he took a keen interest in the Free Church school. This he housed above his church in Fort Augustus, and one that wants to see what a schoolroom used to be sixty years ago may see it still upstairs in the church near which he lies buried.

III
As a preacher he was one of the most striking and remarkable preachers of the great generation to which he belonged, and sayings of his that lingered in the memory of his old hearers have been transmitted by them to succeeding generations. When he indulged his imagination, as he was wont sometimes to do, he was able to clothe Gospel truth in memorable forms.

The angels are ministering spirits sent forth to minister to such as are heirs of salvation. In this connection he is said to have spoken once somewhat as follows: “When in heaven the angels were told that the Son of God was to take to Himself a bride they were at a stand-still. There is no one among us, they said to one another, that is a fit match for the Son. Who can His bride be? When they were told that she was to be taken from the ruins of the Fall on earth, and that she was sinful and defiled, they wondered more and more. How can that be? was their question. How can such a bride be a fit match for the Heir of all things? They were told, however, that by the time when He would complete His gracious work for His people and in them, the bride should be more glorious than she was in her first creation, and should reflect the likeness of her Lord. ‘Ah,’ said they, ‘if that be so we will be her ministering servants’.”

One of the noted old Christian women of Ross-shire was Margaret Matheson of Strathconan. In her poor dwelling she used to be visited as a friend by the Laird’s lady, who was sister of one Prime Minister and mother of another, Lady Blanche Balfour. Peggie was so much taken up with Mr MacBean’s striking gift of Gospel preaching that she said he was a man that should never be tied down to one congregation. He should have a commission at large that people everywhere might hear the Gospel. It might have been more comfortable for Mr MacBean to have had such a roving commission, for the view that he took of Baptism made him unusually strict in regard to its administration, This kept him in hot water with his Presbytery. His early connection with Mr Roderick Macleod was seen in their oneness of mind on this matter. Mr MacBean had a high standard for his communicants, and he seldom gave baptismal privileges to any parents that were not communicants. If at any time he did so he would gladly have welcomed them to the Lord’s Table.

IV
In connection with his views on the Sacraments he wrote a Gaelic tract dealing with the attitude of the orthodox American Presbyterian Churches, which were pretty much of his own way of thinking in those days. It was published by Peter Drummond of Stirling, who was married to a sister of his. Mr Drummond and Mr MacBean were kindred souls. Another of Mr MacBean’s sisters was the wife of the excellent Peter Stewart, a Lochaber man, who, over a century ago, was an elder in Hope Street, Glasgow. Mr Stewart went out to Australia ninety years ago, and to extreme old age he was a pillar of strength among the Free Church folk of Sydney, New South Wales.

Francis Macbean was more of an evangelist than of an ecclesiastic. Yet during the Union movement of sixty years ago his interest was awakened, and his inquiries resulted in his coming out quite definitely as one of the Minority that were opposed to the projected Union. It was on his way to Edinburgh to attend the Assembly of 1869, where he meant to record his vote against the Union motion, that he died at Inverness. He had run his race and done his work. So in the end of the day he laid, as a Christian soldier, his armour down. Still, after all these years his memory is cherished as a father in the Church who obtained a good report through faith. He was the author of some Gaelic poems, and years after his death there was published, with a commendatory preface by Dr Smeaton, his narrative of conversations that he had in his student days with the godly Elizabeth Lindsay, a much afflicted Christian girl in Edinburgh. This narrative gives a favourable view of the decision, the kindness, and the judiciousness that were his characteristics. It gives glimpses, too, of some of the excellent of the earth with whom he was intimately acquainted in the Northern Islands about a century ago. Men of kindred spirit are needed in our day whose work and witness the Head of the Church will acknowledge.

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 Peter McBride, North Knapdale, Argyllshire

Author: Rev. Robert Elder, D.D., Rothesay
Source: Disruption Worthies of the Highlands , page 159

Peter McBride

About this period he entered on his college studies in Glasgow, where he enjoyed the privilege of Dr Love’s ministry and friendly counsel, and where he seems to have distinguished himself as a student, especially in the department of Greek. His theological course was begun and finished in Edinburgh. During his attendance at the University, he was urged by the proprietor to accept of the parish school of North Knapdale, vacant by the death of his father, who, in addition to his duties as schoolmaster, had acted as factor for that gentleman, and had enjoyed his confidence and friendship. He declined the offer, notwithstanding the earnest remonstrances of his father’s friend, stating his determination at all hazards to go forward in his preparation for the ministry. After finishing his course at the Hall, he taught for about two years as tutor in an Argyllshire family, and received license from the Presbytery of Kintyre early in 1825. On the 15th June of the same year, he was ordained minister of the chapel of ease (afterwards the new parish) of Rothesay, having been unanimously elected by the congregation, on the removal of the former minister, the Rev. Alexander Stewart, to the parish of Cromarty. In this charge he continued to the end of his ministry, the people having, with very few exceptions, cordially adhered to him when he cast in his lot with the Free Church at the period of the Disruption. He appears from the first to have secured the respect and affection of his flock by his weight and consistency of character, and by his zeal and devotedness to his work as a pastor. His preaching was of a high order, indicating great mental energy, extensive theological knowledge, and mature Christian experience; and while always rich in doctrinal statement, it was also eminently practical, full of rousing appeals to the conscience, and of urgent dealing with sinners to close with the offers of the gospel. He evinced a deep interest in the young, and was ever assiduous and faithful in his private ministrations, proving himself the warm-hearted, generous, and self-denying friend of his people, seeking not theirs but them. He was a great admirer of the late Dr Love of Glasgow, and took an active part in selecting and publishing some of his sermons and letters, to one volume of which, published in 1838, he wrote an excellent preface. He wrote also a preface to “Reasons for accepting a call to India as a Missionary,” by the late Rev. John McDonald; but, with the exception of these papers, and some occasional sermons of his own, he seems to have left no printed remains. He was never married, and his whole life seems to have been devoted to the proper work of the ministry. There can be no doubt, however, that for some years before his death, Mr McBride, although always diligent and faithful, was greatly quickened and stirred up, and that his zeal and earnestness in seeking to win souls to Christ became more and more manifest as the end drew near. This was felt not only by his own people, but by many others throughout the West Highlands and elsewhere, who were privileged to hear him during occasional visits, even before the commencement of his great evangelistic work.

Although he never took much part in the business of the Church courts, he was intensely interested in the important questions which were under discussion for some years previous to the Disruption; and, anticipating the coming crisis, he heartily devoted his energies to the exposition and defence of the great scriptural principles at stake. With this object he frequently visited several districts of the West Highlands and Islands, in company with one or other of his brethren, and powerfully aided in enlightening the people as to the true character of the movement which resulted in the formation of the Free Church. On one of these occasions, in the spring of 1843, he visited the bounds of the Presbytery of Mull, along with the late Rev. Mr McPherson of Kilbrandon, and engaged in a public disputation on the principles of Non-intrusion and spiritual independence with the most influential minister of the district, and others representing the Presbytery, in presence of a large concourse of people; and one who was present (now a respected minister of our Church) writes: “I remember well how the people sympathised with Mr McBride’s statements, which they shewed by coming forward at the close of the meeting, and giving in their adherence to the principles of the party which now forms the Free Church.” Another states that one man went to the meeting resolved to throw stones at Mr McBride, but, when urged at the close, refused, and declared aloud “he would throw stones on any one who touched McBride.” One other, at least, is said to have come under concern of soul at the meeting, and ever after to have followed the Evangelical ministers; and he is reported by a thoroughly credible witness as “still living a life of faith and consistent following of Christ amidst all his trials.”

The following sentence, however, quoted from a minute of his own kirk-session of the West Free Church, drawn up shortly after his death, presents the main character and end of those labours undertaken at the eventful period referred to:- “Much, however, as he valued all pertaining to the defence and wholesome government of the Church, as worthy of every sacrifice for the preservation of its integrity, he followed the highest example in giving prominence to the work of preaching the gospel, for accomplishing the grand end of the ministry, the conversion and salvation of perishing sinners.” But it was at and after the period of the Disruption that he appeared in the character of an evangelist, as truly “a burning and a shining light.” There were many districts of the Western Highlands and Islands where large sections of the people gave in their adherence to the Free Church, and sought after its ministrations, while the ministers of the parishes remained within the Establishment; and in order to supply them in some measure with the means of grace during their transition state, it was found necessary to send forth some of the most gifted Gaelic-speaking ministers to itinerate for lengthened periods throughout these widely-scattered districts. There can be no doubt also that, in connection with the Disruption movement, there was awakened in many quarters a great desire to hear the preaching of the gospel, which was new to multitudes in the West Highlands; and the Free Church ministers, no longer restrained by parochial boundaries, felt at perfect liberty to carry the message of salvation wherever there were sinners ready to hear it. Mr McBride was one of those chosen and commissioned by the Church for this special and most important work, and the following extract from the record already quoted justly describes what he was, and what he did, in fulfilling the arduous task to which the Church had called him:- “The work was congenial to him and called forth his energies, which the steady discipline and experience of the past served to sustain and direct. But more than all, the Spirit of God came to inflame and invigorate his soul in a very remarkable measure, and kindled in him such a zeal for the glory of Christ and the salvation of sinners, as that he could not rest without being at the work. In this extending of his labours to the dark and destitute districts of Mull, Morven, Knapdale, and Jura, and the more favoured though still destitute islands of Islay and Skye, but more especially in his native parish of North Knapdale, the Lord came to countenance him, and his soul was gladdened by the sight of sinners awakened by the power of God, through the truth, to a sense of their lost condition. The compassion of his still enlarging heart carried his desires after perishing sinners everywhere. He extended his labours where he could, nothing damped in his ardour by toil, discomforts, privations, difficulties, and left no parish between Bute and Barra unvisited. One would have supposed it impossible for his bodily frame to endure without supernatural strengthening the exhausting labours of the last three years of his life.”

In offering a few brief details of this widely-extended evangelistic work and its results, the present writer has to acknowledge his obligations to brethren in the ministry and others, connected either then or now with the several districts named, especially to Rev. Mr Graham of Campbeltown, Rev. Mr Ferguson of North Knapdale, Rev. Mr Macarthur of Barvas, and Rev. Mr Gray of Saltcoats. His native parish of North Knapdale seems from the first to have occupied a chief place in his thoughts, and to have filled him with deep anxiety. He had visited it frequently before the Disruption, but had expressed himself as grieved at the want of fruit. Returning on one occasion from a preaching tour in the Hebrides, he spent a Sabbath in Knapdale; but, under the painful impression that no good was being done, seemed disinclined to attempt any meetings during the week. Being pressed, however, he remained, and preached again on Monday, when many were awakened to deep concern, and from that day the work rapidly increased, and the interest soon became so general that, as one of the brethren above named states from personal recollection, “the church used to be crowded to the door; no one would remain at home. The contention now was as to who would consent to remain at home, and every one had to take his own turn.”

Mr McBride himself being called upon, gave a short statement regarding this work before the General Assembly of 1845, from which the following sentences are extracted: “In the latter place (Knapdale) there had been a most remarkable and unexpected awakening; and on his return home to his own parish, he had obtained the consent of his beloved congregation, when they heard what had taken place, to repeat his visits to that district, which he had done accordingly almost every week since, up till now. He was happy to say that the impression which had been produced at the beginning had continued up to the present time. He believed he had not paid a single visit without knowing that some one or more individuals had been awakened during that time; some of those who had scoffed at the beginning were themselves, before long, made subjects of the work, and were so at this moment. The number altogether who had been brought under serious impressions, might be between two hundred and three hundred, and some of these had been brought to peace and comfort in believing in the Lord Jesus Christ. He was happy to state also that since the change, the characters of many of them were emerging beautifully. There was a humbleness, a self-abasement, a sense of personal worthlessness, a love of the Saviour, and a devotedness to the glory of God, which it was delightful to witness. In regard to the means used by him in this work, he observed that the only means he had used was that of openly preaching the gospel; he had used no special means whatever. He had never called the people out from the rest, and seldom spoke with them in private, or taken any notice of the particular circumstances of the work at all. In his addresses he certainly did his best to warn them to flee from the wrath to come; and he also took care distinctly to warn them that it was not enough that they were awakened to a sense of their danger, and that besides being awakened, it was necessary that they should be born again; that they should undergo a change not less than that of a new creation into the image of God, that so they might be brought by the saving influence of the Spirit of God to adopt Christ as freely offered to them in the gospel. What might be the result of this work he could not say; it was in the hand of God, to whom the whole glory was due.”

Mr McBride was notably cautious, some might think over scrupulous, in judging of spiritual results, and it is therefore the more interesting to find him in the following year, a few months before his death, thus writing to one of his elders during one of his visits to Knapdale:- “Things go on here well as yet. I do rejoice to think that sinners have been turned to the Lord, and that yet the work does not appear to be done. The people are as eager to hear as ever. They as readily as at the first stop their work on the week days to hear sermon, and even little children cannot be kept at home. May the Lord bless his own word unto them for their conversion.” It is also eminently satisfactory that the present Free Church minister of North Knapdale is enabled, after so long an interval of time, to state with reference to the work: “Memorials still survive, though few, in the persons of those who, through his instrumentality, were awakened first to their danger and to anxiety for their souls, and who, having as I believe found refuge in Christ, are still ‘holding fast the beginning of their confidence firm unto the end’.” In the districts of Mull and Morven also his labours seem to have been very abundant, and remarkably owned and blessed. In those parts, after the spring of 1843, he enjoyed the cordial and powerful co-operation of the late Rev. Peter McLean of Stornoway, who about that time returned from America, and after labouring for some time with wonderful zeal, energy, and success in Mull, was settled there in the autumn of 1843 as  Free Church minister of Tobermory. They were of kindred spirit, both full of earnestness and power in the Master’s service; and in connection with many evangelistic tours made by them throughout the wide adjacent districts, and in the outer Hebrides as far as Lewis, gracious tokens of the Lord’s presence, and of the mighty working of his Spirit, seem to have been vouchsafed to them.

One of the brethren above named, who was himself at that period brought under the power of divine grace, through Mr McBride’s instrumentality, gives the following graphic account of the character and effect of his preaching:- “It is a misrepresentation of his preaching to say that he dwelt always on the dark side of the cloud. He was a wrestler in prayer, by which his own hands were strengthened, his mind enlightened, and his heart comforted; and being thus influenced and fitted for his work anew, his preaching was always powerful and refreshing – unfolding the glorious doctrine of the gospel in a most faithful and lovely manner, as if he would make all his hearers fly from the wrath to come, and draw them with himself to heaven, whither it was evident to all he was himself travelling. In inviting sinners to Christ, and when his hearers, under power, were sobbing and crying, how pressingly he called them to come, saying, ‘The Saviour is here ready to receive all who come. Oh! come, come to Him!’ Then, imagining the sinner saying, ‘Oh, minister, I am such a great sinner, I am afraid Christ will not receive me!’ He would reply, ‘Let the little sinners stand aside in the meantime, and let the greatest sinners come first, here is an infinitely great Saviour ready to receive you.’ Imagine another saying, ‘I would come, but am not able.’ He would answer, ‘I am glad to hear you have come to see and feel that you cannot come, that is just what Christ wants, to put the work wholly in his own hands, and now be sure to have the true Christ. He would then go on to describe the suitableness, fulness, and all-sufficiency of Christ as a Saviour.”

Another, a native of Mull , who seems also to have partaken of the blessing writes: “The aweful solemnity, the unction and tenderness of his labours during the commuton services at Tobermory, a few days before his death, will never be effaced from the memory of many who were privileged to be there.”

The circumstances connected with his lamented death deserve particular notice. He had been preaching with his wonted energy in Knapdale on the 10th September 1846, and on the same afternoon he set sail in an open boat for the island of Easdale, about twenty-five or thirty miles distant, to which place he had been urgently invited to come, and where a dear sister of his own resided, the wife of Mr McDonald, a worthy Free Church teacher, who still survives, and who has kindly furnished some particulars of his end. A dense fog set in, and being also becalmed, they were carried hither and thither by the strong currents which prevail on that coast, so that they lost their way, and did not reach their destination till about two o’clock next afternoon. Being exposed during a whole night at sea, and having, through sheer fatigue, slept for a time in the open boat, he caught cold, and feeling ill, went immediately to bed on arriving at Easdale. About six o’clock, however, being told that many had assembled in the schoolroom expecting that he would preach, he rose from his bed, preached with great power, and returned about eight o’clock to bed, never again to rise. Fever set in with great violence, and his sufferings were intense, till it pleased the Lord to release him. The sad tidings having soon reached his attached flock in Rothesay, deputies were sent day by day from the office-bearers or members to minister to his wants. He was perfectly conscious throughout all his illness, and being aware that death was approaching, all that he could utter was expressive of peace and hope in Christ. When asked by some of his sorrowing office-bearers whether he had any message to his congregation, he answered, “Tell them to cleave to Christ, and to one another, and it will be all well, for ‘because I live, ye shall live also’.” When he felt the end drawing very near, he asked the friends present to read and sing the twenty-third Psalm. At the beginning he joined in the worship with a strong and clear voice, but before the last verse was sung he had passed from the scene of his toil and suffering to the rest which remaineth for the people of God. Thus was finished, on the 2d October 1846, the earthly course of one of the most devoted, powerful, and honoured ministers of the Free Church of Scotland, in the fiftieth year of his age, and the twenty-second of his ministry.

The sudden and unexpected removal of this eminent servant of  Christ, it need hardly be said, was the occasion of deep sorrow and concern, not only to his own bereaved flock, but to multitudes throughout the Western Highlands and Islands, who had been awakened and blessed under his earnest ministrations. When his remains were being conveyed to Rothesay by the route of the Crinan Canal, which skirts the parish of North Knapdale, the people of that parish and the neighbourhood, old and young, crowded to the banks, and followed the party of mourners all along the way with loud lamentations. The whole community of Rothesay shared in the deep distress of his stricken congregation. The late honoured Dr Duncan, who was always the warm friend of Mr McBride, and who had spent part of the summer of 1846 in Rothesay, wrote a most touching letter of sympathy to his sorrowing flock, from which the following lines are extracted:- “We share in a common calamity. You have lost a most endeared pastor; the Church at large a most able minister; I a most beloved friend. How can I forget that it was ever my privilege to hold familiar converse with one whose mind, naturally of noblest mould, carefully stored with the best and solidest learning, divine and human – deeply subdued in days long past to the obedience of the gospel, and richly filled with the Word of God dwelling in it in all wisdom and spiritual understanding – was ever pouring forth without straining, and as it were without effort, streams of wholesome doctrine, hallowed affection, and glowing aspirations after the glory of God and the salvation and universal good of his fellow-men!” A letter was also received by his respected relative, the late Rev. Alexander McBride, North Bute, from the venerable Dr Chalmers, with a brief extract from which, this sketch may suitably be closed:- “It was,” he writes on 19th October, “with the utmost sorrow and concern that I received the intelligence of Mr McBride’s death – one of the most affecting events, and also severest losses to the country and the Church that has occurred for many years. I fully sympathise with the deep distress both of his relatives and hearers, and I share most deeply in the sentiment felt by one and all of them that a master in Israel is fallen. Though not able to attend the funeral, I have not the less mourned in spirit over this great public calamity. May the Giver of all grace sanctify his own dispensations, and lead us all henceforward to be followers of them who through faith and patience are now inheriting the promises.”

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 Alexander MacColl

Author: J. M. [perhaps Principal John Macleod]
Source: The Monthly Record of the Free Church of Scotland, October, pages 253-255

Forty years have passed away since Mr MacColl of Lochalsh finished his work on earth. His father was a shepherd belonging to Argyleshire, who at different times lived in Lochcarron and Glenelg. It was in the former parish that his son was born who was destined in his day to be one of the most eminent leaders of the Highlands. In early life Alexander MacColl came to the knowledge of himself as a sinner, and of the salvation of the Gospel. There was in the strong reserved man a marked strain of aloofness and reticence. Yet at some times he gave glimpses of what he had passed through in those days. On one occasion he was tempted to think that his sin was such that there was no mercy for him. It was a Communion season; and in the evening there was to be a meeting over which one of the godly laymen was to preside. In the stress of his struggle with despair, Mr MacColl made up his mind to put the matter to this test. If he should be late of reaching the meeting-place and the meeting had begun before he arrived, he was to take this as a token that there was no mercy for him. The hour for the meeting came and he had not reached the place. The people were gathered, and William Urquhart took his place at the head of the meeting. There was an awkward delay. He put off beginning the service until a young man came in, whom he addressed thus: “Young man, never in your life again take upon yourself to set limits before the Holy One of Israel.” The young man was Alexander MacColl, and this story he told perhaps fully forty years afterwards by way of warning against presumptuous attempts to lay down conditions and to appoint tokens for the Lord as he himself had ventured to do.

I
While still the dew of his youth was upon him Mr MacColl set about preparing for the ministry of the Gospel. In the eventful years of the Church Conflict he was a student whose course was almost completed when the Disruption took place in 1843. He was thus one of the senior students of Theology in the first session of the Free Church College in Edinburgh. For some years before he completed his course of study he was parish teacher in the highly-favoured parish of Uig in Lewis during the refreshing ministry of Mr Alexander Macleod, in whose days the great awakening of Uig took place. Mr Macleod was singularly happy in the men that he brought as teachers to his parish. John Macrae, afterwards known as Big Macrae of Knockbain and Greenock, was one of them; Peter Maclean, of Cape Breton and Tobermory and Stornoway, was another; John Finlayson was another; and Alexander MacColl was the last of them. All four belonged to the front rank of the preachers of their time. The name of John Finlayson is not now so well known. His brief ministry lasted only four or five years altogether; but both in Ness and in Bracadale his name was fragrant. When the Disruption took place Mr Macleod of Uig was in Edinburgh. He lost no time in sending word to his remote parish of what had happened, and asked Mr MacColl and Angus Maciver, his catechist in Bernera, to go through Lewis and bring the people out with the Free Church. This they did, and they did thorough work. The blessing that in after years rested so richly on Mr MacColl’s preaching attended these, his first endeavours, while he was still a student. In those days, though students for the ministry might have the chance of addressing district meetings, they did not have the privilege of addressing a regular congregation. Things are done more loosely nowadays.

After he was licensed Mr MacColl laboured for years as a probationer in his native parish and in Applecross. He had many overtures for settlement, but he put them aside and worked on chiefly in the rugged and needy district where he began his regular preaching work. Old people used to tell of how, in Camus a’chait, on the shore of Applecross, he used to hold his outside services, which, in spite of the depth of the snow of winter, were attended unscathed by the whole community. To the end of his days he cherished a specially deep affection for his friends of Applecross. And this was heartily reciprocated. Factious opposition, in which there was a strain of Separatism, broke the unanimity of the congregation of Lochcarron, which sought him as their pastor. The leader of this faction was ultimately reconciled to him, but the line that he had taken prevented Mr MacColl’s settlement in the sphere of his early labours. In those years Mr MacColl’s work was not confined to his native district. Tradition tells of his assisting at a great Communion gathering held at Fort William, at which Mr Duncan Campbell of Kiltearn was the leading assistant. It was in the year 1848. Alexander Macintyre of Sunart, and Alexander MacColl, were the other assistants. Neither of the two was as yet ordained. But it was a rare conjunction of luminaries when three such preachers took part in the services of a Communion season in Lochaber.

II
At length, after remaining of his own accord as a probationer for eight years, Alexander MacColl accepted a Call, and was ordained as minister of the great Free Church congregation of Duirinish, in Skye. He laboured in that charge for eighteen years, and he did notable work. As the result of his preaching there was a great awakening, and to this day the parish of Duirinish bears the mark of his work within its bounds. In those years he became a regular assistant at the Communion services in North Uist, where the blessing that crowned his labours in his home congregation attended his preaching in rich measure, and his name is almost as well remembered in the Outer Islands as in any of the spheres of his stated labour. During those Skye years Mr MacColl had the experience of a bitter trial in the alienation from him of his neighbour, the venerable Roderick Macleod of Snizort. A whisperer separateth between chief friends. This rift between such eminent brethren is commented upon in Major Neil Macleod’s verse about the accuser of the brethren:

“Is fear-casaid nam bràithrean
A tha ‘ghnáth air sail an drobh
‘Thug deuchainn do Abraham,
Do Dhaniel ‘s do Iob,
Chuir dealachadh mi-chairdeil
Eadar Barnabas is Pol,
‘S eadar Ionatan Ghleann Bhearnasdail
Is Daibhidh an Loin-mhoir.”

After his eighteen years of service in the Isle of Skye, Mr MacColl was called and accepted the Call to succeed Mr Francis Macbean as minister of the joint charge of Fort Augustus and Glenmoriston. There he laboured for seven years. And though on leaving Duirinish he left one of the largest congregations in Scotland, and in accepting the Call to Fort Augustus he went to one that was a mere fraction of the congregation that he left, he, like his worthy predecessor, though they both met with difficulties, found congenial work and a well-disposed people in this inland charge. The years that he spent in Fort Augustus brought Mr MacColl into closer touch with the Central and Eastern Highlands than he had previously enjoyed. He came to be known all over the Gaelic area as one of the most remarkable preachers of his day. He remained, however, especially a West Coast worthy, and when he had put in seven years at Fort Augustus he accepted a Call from Lochalsh, to which charge he was admitted in 1877. Here he spent the last years of his honoured ministry. and here, aged about 74, he died early in the year 1889. He was in harness to the very end. For the last year or two of his life he suffered from the cancer that ended his days. But in spite of its ravages he did not give up work until the setting sun called him home.

III
During his years at Fort Augustus Mr MacColl succeeded Mr Macbean not only in his charge but in much of the work that he did beyond its bounds. When the Inverness summer Communion came round, if Dr Mackay of the North Church had Dr Kennedy of Dingwall as his helper in the great congregation which met in the Chapel Yard, there was an equally great Gaelic congregation that filled the Bell’s Park, and there Francis Macbean was wont to be the preacher. Mr Sutherland of the East Church brought Mr Macbean’s successor in Fort Augustus to be his successor in this work; and thus, when Gaelic was much more spoken in the Eastern Highlands than it now is, Mr MacColl had one of the greatest audiences that a Gaelic preacher could command. He was a master of assemblies. Indeed it used to be said that there was no minister of his day that could handle a Highland audience like him. In his preaching he reminded the old hearers of Dr Macdonald of Ferintosh, the Apostle of the North. He reasoned closely, and in his preaching there was a solid body of doctrine that instructed and edified the attentive hearer. He was clear and pointed and discriminating in his applications, and his appeals excelled in power. For years the Glasgow Highlanders had the privilege of having Mr MacColl at the Duke Street Communion services just as Urquhart of Hope Street used to have Dr Kennedy on such occasions, Mr MacColl was Evan Gordon‘s stand-by for his congregation. At such central Communions his preaching came to be known by his countrymen drawn from all quarters of the Highlands and Islands.

Mr MacColl was richly endowed with prudence and he was a man of business. As such he was a power in the community. In his Skye days he showed himself as earnest in fighting the abuse of strong drink and tobacco among his people as ever Mr Roderick Macleod of Snizort was. When public questions arose in the Free Church that went far to rend her he took a strong line in opposing the latitudinarian tendencies of the innovating majority. During the Union Controversy before 1873 he published a Gaelic pamphlet, in which he handled carefully the questions at issue. His faculty for close and accurate reasoning showed itself to advantage in this work. Such a reserved and critical divine as Mr Matheson of Gairloch, who was by no means lavish in his praises of men, said to his people that the Lord had conferred an honour on Mr MacColl in enabling him to write such a masterly statement in defence of the cause of Truth. In later years, about 1885, he published, at the request of his brethren, an able speech in opposition to the Disestablishment policy of Dr Rainy‘s followers. This pamphlet is printed in both Gaelic and English, alternate pages being given to each language. Among the younger men that were his junior contemporaries two in particular were his intimates, Mr Galbraith, who became his successor at Lochalsh, and Mr Murdo Mackenzie of Inverness, who had been his special protegé. His unambiguous defence of Old School Presbyterianism had much to do in holding the North-Western Highlands and Islands true to the principles of the Free Church when testing days came.

Mr MacColl was a man much revered and loved. Timothy Nathan, the godly Welshman, said of him: “It is Christ Himself that is lovely, but Mr MacColl wears the likeness of his Master.”

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 James McCosh, D.D., LL.D.

Author: Rev. Professor McCloskie, Princeton College, N.J.
Source: Disruption Worthies: A Memorial of 1843, page 343

James McCosh

James McCosh was born on the banks of the Doon, Ayrshire, 1st April 1811, and received his early education at a parochial school. He studied five years at the University of Glasgow, and then went to Edinburgh, where he studied other five years under Dr Chalmers; while in the University of Edinburgh, he paid considerable attention to Natural Science, and received from the Senatus the Honorary Degree of A.M., for an essay on the “Stoic Philosophy,” which showed his proclivities towards philosophic reading and investigation.

In 1835 he was called to the Abbey Church in Arbroath, and continued there for three years, visiting from house to house in the parish allotted to him. When in the Divinity Hall of Edinburgh, he had defended the cause of Non-Intrusion, or rather of Direct Election by the people, in the Theological Society; and now in the Presbytery of Arbroath, and all along the east coast of Forfarshire, he and several other young men lately settled there, joined the Rev. Thomas Guthrie, who was their leader, in resolutely maintaining and promulgating the grand principles of the rights of the members of the Church. In 1838 he was appointed by the Crown, on the recommendation of his former teacher, Dr Welsh, to the first charge of the church in Brechin, one of the most enviable livings of the Church of Scotland. There he worked laboriously in preaching not only in the large cathedral church, but in barns and kitchens, in visiting from house to house, and in teaching in a large class, often numbering 150, the young men and women of the parish. The Gospel had been preached in Brechin by a succession of faithful ministers from the days of Willison at the beginning of last century; there was a large amount of Bible knowledge among the people; with scarcely an exception, the whole population went to some place of worship. He and his colleague, the Rev. A. L. R. Foote, had a communion-roll of upwards of 1400.

During the four years of his ministry in the Established Church, he kept steadily before his people and throughout the district the great principles for which the Church was contending. In “Recollections of the Disruption in Brechin,” printed for private circulation, we have extracts from addresses delivered in the years 1842 and 1843, which show how fully he perceived the character and measured the difficulties of the situation. He believed that by the decision of the House ol Lords, spiritual jurisdiction was taken away from the Church. In an address, dated 13th November, 1842, he says:— “The principles which I have endeavoured to state have long been entertained by me; I had lately, when on a bed of distress, an opportunity of reviewing them. My regret, with eternity in view, was, not that I had done too much, but that I had done so little. Deliberation has only tended to show me that the principles I hold are connected with all that is noble in the Church of Christ, of which I am honoured to be a minister.” This was his language to his people immediately before going up to the Convocation in Edinburgh. As the Disruption, now evidently coming, drew on, he was actively employed in helping to organise his own congregation and several other congregations in neighbouring parishes where the ministers adhered to the Established Church. At the Disruption, 825 of his congregation adhered to the Free Church.

On the first Sabbath after the Disruption he preached on Haggai 2:9, “The glory of this latter house shall be greater than of the former,” and referred to the sorrow they felt in leaving the Established Church, and the confidence they felt that God would bless the Free Church. At the opening of their new church in November following, he gave his reflections on the crisis through which he and others had passed. He said that if they had given up their principles, the wicked would have triumphed on seeing the cause of God betrayed by the so-called Church of God. “In this contest,” continued he, “we have lost much. Some of us have lost that means of support of which at one time we never expected to be deprived but by death; we have lost, it may be, some of our status in the society of this world; we have been exposed, as our Master was, to reproaches and scorn; we have all of us lost those churches in which we worshipped, and the very stones of which were dear unto us; some of you may have lost friends and favours.” Yet he added that they had not been defeated, nor had they cause to be ashamed; they would bless God that they had been permitted and enabled to give a testimony for Christ’s kingdom and crown.

The year following the Disruption was one of hard and trying work to Mr McCosh, in which he displayed the energy, tact, and courage which are characteristic of him. He was appointed by the General Assembly “Convener of Supply” for the district of the county of Mearns, and the North-East of Forfarshire; and he now set himself to organise congregations, to provide them with ordinances, to advise and aid in getting sites, in raising funds, and having churches erected. The ministers who remained in the Established Church did their utmost to obstruct the members of their churches who desired to join the Free Church. Lords, lairds, and their factors scowled on the movement, and threatened their tenants and dependants. Mr McCosh had many adventures in confronting their hostility and in gathering the people into churches. In a number of places no sites could be obtained for churches from the proprietors of the soil. In Fettercairn the people could get no place to worship in till a widow offered a field which she rented, and there on the green grass Mr McCosh dispensed the ordinance of the Lord’s Supper a few Sabbaths after the Disruption, to 213 communicants, and this under the immediate view of Sir John Gladstone who in the first instance did all he could to crush the movement. In Menmuir Mr McCosh after officiating twice to his own congregation preached on the Sabbath evening on the roadside, and gathered a congregation who after keen persecution got a site for a church. In Lochlee the Free Church members met with determined opposition from a very powerful man, Lord Panmure, who possessed the whole district; and for a long time they had to worship in a shepherd’s house provided for them by a courageous farmer, David Inglis. Mr McCosh also aided in forming congregations and building churches in Fordoun, Laurencekirk, Stonehaven, and Bervie. In carrying on this work he rode around the country on horse-back, preaching in barns and ballrooms, sometimes riding thirty miles, and preaching thrice on a Sabbath. It is believed that now for the first time was the Gospel of the grace of God preached in parishes from which it had in all previous ages been excluded by Moderatism and Prelacy.

In the winter of 1843-44 he went as a member of a deputation to the parts of England in and around the city of York, in Northamptonshire, and about Olney, addressing meetings on the cause of the Free Church, and soliciting the sympathy and help of the English Nonconformists. In the year 1844 he removed from the West to the East Free Church of Brechin, where he ministered until the end of 1851.

Disruption struggles began to subside in 1846, and Mr McCosh was thus able to apply himself to the preparation of his first great work, “The Method of the Divine Government.” The appearance of this work in 1850 at once placed its author amongst the foremost thinkers and apologists of the age, and led soon afterwards to his being offered the Chair of Logic and Metaphysics in Queen’s College, Belfast. He entered on the duties of this chair in 1852, where he soon proved himself as able a teacher as he had been a successful writer. During the sixteen years of his Belfast Professorship, he created a taste for the study of Philosophy in the North of Ireland, and sent out a number of students who have already made their mark in this department. At this time he was usually an Examiner in the Queen’s University, he was one of the distinguished Board of Examiners who organised the first Competitive Examination for the Civil Service of India, and he was twice Examiner for the Ferguson Scholarships open to graduates of the Scottish Universities. He also published whilst in Belfast “An Examination of John Stuart Mill’s Philosophy,” and “The Intuitions of the Mind Inductively Investigated,” and several other philosophical works. He advocated the cause of Intermediate Education in Ireland, and did much to promote the circulation of Sound Literature through the Bible and Colportage Society, of which he was one of the secretaries. He took a leading part in organising the Ministerial Support Fund of the Presbyterian Church, and was for some years Joint Convener of that scheme. His last publication before leaving Ireland was a vigorous protest against a project for endowing Popery, which was then seriously proposed by the leaders of both political parties.

In 1868 Dr McCosh was called to the Presidency of the College of New Jersey, at Princeton in the United States, a post formerly occupied by Aaron Burr, and Jonathan Edwards, and (another Scotchman) John Witherspoon. Under his supervision the College has had remarkable success, having doubled the numbers of its buildings, professors, and students, within the eleven years of his administration, and having been enriched by large benefactions, and having greatly improved its methods of teaching.

Notwithstanding the multifarious work incident to the office of President of a large American College, and the duties of the Chair of Psychology which he ably fills, Dr McCosh has found leisure for a good deal of outside work. He favoured from the first the Union of the Old and New School Branches of the American Presbyterians, and he is entitled to the credit of having planned and in some measure carried out the Catholic Alliance of all Presbyterian Churches in the Pan-Presbyterian Council. He has also issued in America, his books on “The Discursive Laws of Thought,” on “Christianity and Positivism,” and on “The Scottish Philosophy from Hutcheson to Hamilton;” besides a large number of smaller works, public addresses, sermons, and contributions on Philosophical and Apologetic subjects to The Princeton Review, The North American Review, and other Reviews, and to The Popular Science Monthly.

All his writings are characterised by penetration and boldness of thought, by giving full force to every newly discovered truth, and by uniform allegiance to the supreme authority of the Word of God.

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 Thomas McCrie, D.D., LL.D.

Author: Rev. Charles G. McCrie, Ayr
Source: Disruption Worthies: A Memorial of 1843, page 349

Thomas McCrie

The family of the biographer of Knox consisted of four sons and one daughter. Of these, Thomas, the subject of this brief memoir, was the eldest. He was born in Edinburgh, November 1797, and received his classical education at the High School of that city. One of his teachers there was James Pillans, who afterwards became Professor of Humanity in the Edinburgh University, to which his High School pupil in due time passed. The intercourse between the two was ever after of a friendly nature, the Professor retaining a pleasing remembrance of the elegant Latin Composition of Thomas, while often expressing his high estimate of the fine scholarship and brilliant parts of his youngest brother George, whom Pillans regarded as lost when he became his brother’s successor at Clola, and who died at Edinburgh in 1878. Destined from an early age for the ministry of the Original Secession Church—the branch of the Secession to which the family belonged,—Thomas McCrie next attended the Theological Hall, having Archibald Bruce of Whitburn for his professor, with John Duncan, the “Rabbi,” professor of the New College, Edinburgh, and Robert Shaw, expositor of the Confession of Faith, for fellow students. The early years of his ministry were spent first in Crieff, where he was ordained in 1822 and laboured for eight years, and thereafter at Clola, Aberdeenshire, where he remained other seven years. It was while enjoying and endeavouring to profit by the ease of a rural charge, and in compliance with the suggestion of his father, that he undertook, as his first literary work, the translation of Pascal’s “Provincial Letters.” Although completed at Clola, the volume was not published till several years later; so soon as given to the public it received a cordial welcome, passed through several editions, and has lately been added to their “Golden Library” series by Chatto & Windus.

In 1835 the great Scottish Historian died; and shortly afterwards the son, responding to a call from the vacant congregation, became the father’s successor. For twenty years he was minister of what, in his time, was known as “Davie Street Church,” situated in the south side of the town, in a street bearing that name, that runs off the main thoroughfare of Nicolson Street: since then the place of worship has been called “McCrie Church.” The position of McCrie the younger as a preacher fell short of the highest. Academical in his style, fastidious in his composition, and not possessing any great amount of ease, freedom or readiness in delivery, he ought, if justice were to be done to his carefully prepared and fully written out lectures and discourses, to have had ample liberty to read in the pulpit what he had elaborated in the study. That, however, was a thing not to be thought of in the Secession Church of his day, “the paper” being sternly reprobated by professors in the hearing of trial discourses, and held in utter abhorrence by all vacant congregations sitting in judgment upon candidates.

In after years, when, as a Free Church and English Presbyterian minister, Dr McCrie felt himself at liberty to make use of his manuscript in the pulpit, he became a more effective and much more popular preacher, his services being eagerly sought and highly appreciated in the preaching of anniversary and other special services. But although the son did not attain to the pulpit popularity of the father, and his Edinburgh congregation was never a large one, lacking elements of growth and expansion, the name of Thomas McCrie the younger soon became known in the literary circles of Edinburgh, and thereafter familiar to the reading public of Scotland. It speedily became evident that he had in no ordinary degree the pen of a ready, graceful, and popular writer, and several works with which his name has ever since been associated, belong to the period of his life with which we are now dealing. Thus, in 1840 he wrote the “Life of Thomas McCrie, D.D.,” which is replete with valuable information bearing upon the church controversies and conflicts of that ecclesiastic’s times: from a very early period of its history he was connected with the Wodrow Society, rendering valued services in the selection of its publications, and personally editing three volumes; and in 1850 he wrote the “Memoirs of Sir Andrew Agnew,” which reached a second edition in the following year. By the time this work was published, the author of it had received two University honours—the Degree of D.D. from the University of Aberdeen, and that of LL.D. from the University of Glasgow. There was one department of literary work in which Dr McCrie’s help was often sought, and much thought of when rendered, that, namely, of periodical and journal literature. He had great skill and ease in the composition of leading articles, reviews, and magazine papers. Hugh Miller, in the height of his career as editor of The Witness, discovered the ability of the Davie Street minister, gladly secured his services as an occasional contributor to the columns of his paper, and continued to be ever after a warm friend of his collaborateur. The Witness editor is known to have said that among all the literary men and famous ecclesiastics in Edinburgh at that time, there was not one who could throw off a leader or a literary criticism so effectively and gracefully as the Secession minister; and it was no uncommon thing for some brilliant leading article or dashing review to be attributed to the author of “The Testimony of the Rocks,” which in reality came from the pen of his contributor and friend. This was the case as regards an article upon a “New Edition of the Holy Bible, edited by the Rev. Dr Robert Lee,” in which the writer professed, like Cowper’s cottager, to “just know, and know no more, our Bible true,” but in which he severely handled the Moderatism in Theology and Bible interpretation of the Greyfriars’ Professor of Biblical Criticism; and it was notably so as regards several articles upon Lord Macaulay’s “History of England,” which attracted great notice at the time they appeared, were widely regarded and spoken of in this country and America as Hugh Miller‘s, and were afterward published in a pamphlet form.

The second leading period in Dr McCrie’s life may be dated from 1852, in which year a union was effected between a majority of the Secession body to which he belonged and the Free Church of Scotland. In the negotiations that preceded he took his own share, although not figuring in the deliberations and debates of Church Courts, for which, indeed, he had no aptitude; and when the union was consummated, Dr McCrie appeared at Tanfield Hall along with Dr Shaw of Whitburn, Dr Laing of Colmonell, and Mr White of Haddington, these having been selected by their brethren as representatives of the smaller uniting Church. Four years later, the Free Church conferred upon him her highest honour, by placing him in the Moderator’s Chair of her General Assembly. His predecessor in the office was the Rev. Dr James Henderson of Glasgow, whose loving spirit, fine taste, and ripe scholarship found congenial employment in introducing not only his own personal friend, but also the son of one whom he, when a student, had known and revered as the friend of Andrew Thomson who had been the guide of his youth. The meetings of Assembly over which Dr McCrie presided were held in the Music Hall, Edinburgh, the Free Church having by that time left Canonmills with its memories of post-Disruption Assemblies, and the present Assembly Hall at the head of the Mound not being then built; and the likeness which accompanies this sketch is associated with his Moderatorship, the photograph of which it is an engraving having been taken by Tunny of Edinburgh after the May meetings, and so representing the subject of it as he was in the fifty-ninth year of his age. Before Assembly met Dr McCrie had ceased to be a minister of the Free Church and a citizen of Edinburgh, having accepted an invitation addressed to him by the English Presbyterian Church to fill the Chair of Church History and Systematic Theology in her College, and having accordingly removed to London in October of 1856. In addition to hereditary and acquired qualifications for such work as now lay before him, the Professor-elect possessed the great advantage of having previously discharged the duties of a Divinity Professor. At the death of Dr Paxton he had been appointed Theological Professor by the Synod of United Original Seceders, and acted as such till the union above referred to; in the Free Church also he had, at the request of the College Committee, acted for a session as Professor in Aberdeen, after the death of Dr Maclagan, and before the Hall in that city was finally placed among the theological institutions of the Free Church. With Dr Lorimer as colleague professor, and Dr James Hamilton as lecturer—men to whom he felt strongly drawn, not only because of kindred pursuits, but also through perfect congeniality of temperament—Dr McCrie gave ten years of arduous labour to the enlarging and upbuilding of the Presbyterian Church in England in what may be regarded as the period of that Church’s renaissance. The high esteem and warm affection in which he was held by the successive bands of ministers who studied under him, and also by the ministers and members of the Church at large, were strikingly evinced in 1866, when the Professor found it needful, owing to increasing infirmities, and more especially to cataract, which rendered writing and reading painful and unsafe, to place the resignation of his professorship in the hands of the Synod. On that occasion a handsome presentation was made to him by all who were or had been his students, and the Synod marked its sense of the services he had rendered the Church at large by according to him a retiring allowance and the rank of emeritus Professor. On his part, the disabled Professor testified his unabated interest in the revived Presbyterian Church of England, and his undiminished attachment to those with whom he had been associated, by publishing, as soon as partial restoration of sight enabled him, a volume entitled “Annals of English Presbytery,” inscribed, “To the Reverend the Moderator and Ministers, with the Elders, Deacons, and Members of the Presbyterian Church in England, with sincere gratitude and respect.”

The closing years of Dr McCrie’s life were spent partly at Gullane, in East Lothian, on the Links of which he had, in younger days, spent many a happy hour in the bracing recreation of golf, and partly in his native city, living during the winter months in a Newington house, distant only about a stone’s cast from that in which his illustrious father died. The most important work accomplished in his retirement was in connection with his “Sketches.” Originally a course of week night lectures on the History of the Church of Scotland, delivered to overflowing audiences, first in the Old, and then in the New Town, a still wider popularity had been given to them by their publication in a cheap form by the Free Church Publication Committee, when they circulated widely in Great Britain and America, and were translated on the Continent. As now extended and brought “down to a time which is within the memory of men still living,” the two thin volumes have given place to one thick octavo, and the “Sketches” bear the name of “The Story of the Scottish Church from the Reformation to the Disruption,” published by Messrs Blackie of Glasgow. This book was published in December 1874—it being the privilege of his nephew, the writer of this notice, to correct the proofs and construct the index: and, when that took place, the author remarked, “My work in this world is now done.” So it proved to be; for, shortly after, he was prostrated with the infirmities under which he finally sunk, and, in the evening of the 9th May 1875, the evening of a peaceful Sabbath on earth, he entered without a struggle into “the Sabbaths of eternity, one Sabbath deep and wide.” Of his beloved wife, who predeceased him by an interval only of weeks; of his brother, John, who, after graduating with marked honour at the Edinburgh University, and further qualifying himself for the scholastic profession by Continental travel and study, was appointed first Rector of the Normal Seminary of Glasgow, but was cut off in the twenty-ninth year of his age, when opening powers gave fine promise of distinction; of his father, whom Christopher North described in the Chaldee Manuscript as “a Griffin with a roll of the names of those whose blood had been shed between his teeth, and who stood over the body of one that had been buried long in the grave, defending it from all men, and behold ! there were none who durst come near him “—of these and other relatives the remains rested in the family burying-ground of Old Greyfriars Churchyard, Edinburgh; and, towards the end of the week in which he died, we laid his body within the same hallowed enclosure—fit resting-place for a leal-hearted son of the Reformation and the Covenants.

In addition to the works of Dr McCrie already specified, it fell to his lot to edit a volume of his father’s Sermons in 1836; a volume of the Miscellaneous Writings of the same in 1841; and a uniform edition of the principal works of the historian, in four volumes, published by Messrs Blackwood, Edinburgh, in 1856.

When it is added that during his Edinburgh ministry he delivered and published a course of “Lectures on Baptism,” that he was a frequent contributor to and for several years editor of the British and Foreign Evangelical Review, and that he edited for Messrs Johnstone & Hunter an edition of Barrow on the “Supremacy,” notice has been taken of the outstanding literary labours of one whose pen was that of a ready writer, and to whom it was a necessity of nature to be always engaged upon some work, historical, theological, or literary. From what was said at an early stage regarding his preaching, it may be inferred that in general bearing and manner Dr McCrie was somewhat formal and stiff. And, doubtless, he was so to some extent. On coming into his company, a stranger might feel that a considerable amount of constraint pervaded the intercourse, and that there were a formality and a frigidity which would be sad hindrances in the way of free and pleasant conversation; but the impression would probably soon give way to the persuasion that all this was on the surface, and that he was in the company of a kindly, simple, and genial nature, of one who loved sport and humour, as he enjoyed and cultivated the music of the voice and the violin. What he was to those who lived alongside of him in the privacy of the domestic circle we may not venture to express, except by stating that, with no children of his own to brighten his dwelling, he has left a pleasant and tender memory in the affections of brothers’ and sisters’ children, and that he was never for any length of time without some young relative who found under his roof a home. What he was to those who knew him as a college chum, or brother minister, or colleague professor, or literary confrère, may be gathered from the testimony of Dr Wylie, one of his oldest and most valued friends, who, preaching, in the church that now bears his name, on the Sabbath after the funeral, concluded with these touching words, which may fitly close this sketch:— “My friendship with the deceased was the longest, the sweetest, and the most profitable of my life. I watched by the bedside of the elder McCrie, the historian of Knox, during the twenty hours he lay dying. It was also my privilege to be present during the last hours of the younger McCrie. I recited to him at intervals promises from the Word of God. The eye which had already closed opened once more, and filled with a tender intelligence, a serene peace. The words of Holy Writ evidently were to him draughts of the water of life. He expired so peacefully that his hand, which he had placed in mine an hour before, was never withdrawn. Thus he slept.”

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 Alexander Macdonald

Author: Rev. George MacDonald, Aberdeen
Source: Disruption Worthies of the Highlands , page 109

Alexander Macdonald was born on the 16th May 1791, at Claiseach, in the parish of Halkirk, county of Caithness. He was the elder of a family of two sons. His parents, George Macdonald and Marshall Douglas, were eminent in their day for personal godliness. His father was one of the younger members of the family to which he belonged; and it would appear that early in life he was brought to know and fear the Lord, for it is told of him that at twelve he was accustomed to assemble the young people of the same age with himself, teach them to repeat the Shorter Catechism, and speak to them of God and his Christ, and of the “great eternity.” When he grew up he walked long distances to hear evangelical preaching. The parish minister of those days was a scholarly man, generous and kind to the Lord’s people, of whom there were very many eminent for godliness; but he was a poor shepherd to watch over them, and feed their souls with the bread of life. George Macdonald had a vigorous mind, was very contemplative, had a marvellous power to realise spiritual things, and was greatly under their influence. He was modest and retiring in his disposition, humble and solemn in his deportment, and consistent and firm in his Christian profession. His wife, Marshall Douglas, was one of four sisters, each of whom was faithful for Christ in her own sphere. She had a superior intellect, strong will, and intense  love for the household of faith. From anecdotes still related of her, it would appear that she possessed a most striking power to concentrate her thoughts, and to occupy them with such subjects as a sensitively-tender conscience approved. She was authoritative in her manner, not only in her own family, but also in the private meetings of the Lord’s people, among whom, even at an early period in life, she had the place assigned her of a mother in Israel. But the chief feature in the Christian life of both was their prayerfulness. They prayed much with and for one another. They lived together as heirs of the grace of life, in honour preferring one another. They had a small farm, and so possessed enough to meet their few temporal necessities without much toil, as well as to shew humble hospitality to the Lord’s people who came their way. Their home was very much frequented by the choicest professors in that part of the country at that time. Such were Alexander Macdonald’s parents and the home with its hallowed influence of his early days.

I may state, that about that period there were many such humble Christian homes in the north of Scotland which gave ministers to the Church, whose earnest spirituality and devoted service secured for her in the day of her trial the adherence of the people throughout the Highlands. Let it moreover be observed, that among the professors of religion, in the parish of Halkirk at least, there existed not one breath of the spirit of Separatism. True those godly people did not attend the parish church; but the reason of this was, they could get nothing from the incumbent to edify them. They loved the Church of Scotland dearly. They prayed most earnestly at all their meetings for her revival; and who can tell what their prayers had to do in bringing about that revival throughout her borders which ultimately broke the bands of the State, and threw off her cords. When the subject of our sketch was a youth, he attended a General Assembly school in the neighbourhood. He soon mastered all his teacher knew. After leaving this school, he was engaged to teach in a district at Sibster, in his native parish, where he continued two and a-half years. About the close of this period Dr Macdonald visited his native county. He called to see his friends at Claiseach, as he was wont to do. What passed between himself and his young friend is not known. Soon thereafter, however, it became evident that the latter had resolved to study for the ministry of the Church of Scotland. After two and a-half years of preparatory study, first at Thurso and then at Halkirk, he entered King’s College, Aberdeen, session 1813-14. About this time his godly mother was much exercised in prayer on his account. Nothing could give both his parents greater joy than that their son should become a true ambassador of Christ; few things could give them more intense grief than that he should be a mere hireling. At length light came through the Word in answer to persevering prayer. Thenceforward they gave him every encouragement and aid which their slender means could afford.

During the summer vacation after his first session at college he devoted himself to the study of mathematics in the parish school of Reay, under Mr Donaldson, a man who made the parish famous in the north by the number of young men whom he trained for the universities, and who came afterwards to occupy positions of influence and importance. After another session at King’s College, he entered Dr Macdonald’s family as tutor. He continued over six years in the manse of Ferintosh. There, besides enjoying the society and friendship of the prince of Highland preachers, he had the opportunity of meeting the most eminent among the godly ministers and men, “the Fathers of Ross-shire.” Having completed his literary curriculum at King’s College, he studied divinity during the usual course of three full sessions and a partial session under Dr Mearns, of King’s College, and Principal Brown, of Marischal. In his student days at Aberdeen, he attended the Gaelic church, especially during the last two years of his course, when Mr Sage, late of Resolis, was its minister. He went occasionally to hear other evangelical ministers in the city. At this point in our sketch something must be said of his own personal religious life. So far as I can ascertain, he was, like his father, early brought to know and fear the Lord – like Timothy of old, “from a child he knew the scriptures;” his whole soul seemed drawn forth to the personal Saviour in the glory of his finished work, and to the love of the Father revealed in him. Few things roused his indignation more than to listen to the preaching of terrors apart from the tenderness and love of the gospel. The themes on which he delighted to dwell in his pulpit ministrations served to reveal the character of his own inner life.

Mr Macdonald was licensed by the Presbytery of Dingwall on the 3rd August 1823. On 3rd November 1824, being appointed under the Royal Bounty, he was ordained missionary to the district of Strathconon and Strathgarve. He continued to labour very diligently in those straths for nearly three years. During his ministrations there he preached two Sabbaths at Strathconon, and the third at Strathgarve. From the beginning of his ministry he was very conscientious and active in his preparations for the pulpit. And there are some still alive who were brought to the Lord through his preaching at this early period. There can be little doubt that he owed much of his usefulness in after life to the training of these early years. The circumstances by which he was surrounded were well fitted to develop in him the features of character by which he became distinguished afterwards, such as intense love of nature, the warmest affection for his people personally and devotion to their interests, very intimate acquaintance with the Scriptures, which enabled him to quote them with great readiness both for doctrinal and practical purposes. He inherited his father’s power of realising most vividly the spiritual realities of the gospel. As he rode his pony up and down those straths, hither and thither among his scattered people, both on Sabbath and week days, summer and winter, his vigorous and active mind could not fail to be engaged with all that was congenial to its disposition, and called it into exercise.

On the 28th September 1827, he was inducted to the Parliamentary charge of Plockton. The village of Plockton and some large farms contiguous to it, which now form the quoad sacra parish, is a part of the civil parish of Lochalsh, and is seven to nine miles distant from the parish church. The incumbent of that time was neither calculated to draw people to him, nor to edify those who came. Mr Macdonald was the first minister of Plockton, and when he entered on his labours there, its state morally and religiously is said to be very low. He devoted himself to his work with great zeal, energy, and faithfulness. He preached the word faithfully and fully on Sabbath and week days. He visited most diligently from house to house, catechised old and young, established Sabbath schools, and secured the services of a superior teacher for the week-day school in the village. Nor did he allow his work among his people to interfere with his studies. The notes of sermons which he has left shew that he was a diligent student and an extensive reader. In 1832 a dear friend of his was settled at Shieldaig, the Rev. Colin Mackenzie, late of Arrochar. He writes: “Mr Macdonald became very soon the most popular preacher in all the west coast of Ross and Inverness-shire. People flocked to hear him from all quarters. It was at length found necessary to get a gallery put up in the church, which his kind good friend, Mr Lillingston of Lochalsh, did at his own expense.” There was one special Sabbath in the month for these gatherings from the surrounding districts. Mr Macdonald, Urray, writes: “He had a fellowship meeting once a month in Plockton, and on the Sabbath previous to the meeting many of the Lord’s people, and always the best of them, came to the Plockton church, and remained for the fellowship meeting on Monday, which was a great help to them. The Sabbath and meeting day were high days both with preacher and hearers. His preaching was as a well of living water to the Lord’s people. They came to it and drank, and went home rejoicing. They could not get the living water in the pulpits of the surrounding parishes. They got it in Plockton.” Communion seasons also were peculiarly interesting and most precious. The numbers present varied from twelve to fourteen thousand, gathered from fourteen parishes. Dr Macdonald was frequently there, and that saintly servant of God, John Kennedy, Redcastle. On all such occasions there was much prayer, and much precious seed sown. Two or three years before the Disruption there was a very decided revival movement in Plockton and the other parishes on the west coast. Mr Macdonald threw himself hopefully and heartily into the movement. He and his friend, the minister of Shieldaig, wrought very much together in this work. And though there was much to disappoint in connection with what was regarded as spiritual fruits of this movement, yet it cannot be denied that such faithful labour yielded permanent beneficial results in both districts. The devotion of the people of Shieldaig to the gospel and to the principles of their church has drawn to them the attention of other churches as well as their own. Tokens of beneficial results equally gratifying could be given with regard to the Plockton congregation.

In 1828 Mr Macdonald married Frances Julia Robertson, daughter of Dr James Robertson, Pitstruan, Aberdeenshire. Miss Robertson was a lady of great natural talents, and high attainments in the Christian life. She was much beloved. The blessing was but a treasure lent him for a day, for on 17th May 1831 she fell asleep in Jesus. “The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.” These words record the resignation of the bereaved and sorrowing husband.

At the Disruption all the parochial clergy remained in the Establishment except Dr Ross, the venerable and learned minister of Lochbroom. He could not sign the Deed of Demission, but he sent in his name, and entered his eternal rest in July after the memorable event. The four ministers of the Parliamentary charges came out and joined the Free Church. Two of them went elsewhere very soon after. It must be evident that the work which devolved on Mr Macdonald and Mr Mackenzie in so wide a district can be better imagined than described. That work, however, they performed successfully. It was in Plockton that Mr Macdonald became known as a man of great preaching power and faithfulness in his Master’s cause. Between himself and the eminently devout Mr Lillingston of Lochalsh there existed the most cordial friendship. This distinguished Christian gentleman was ever ready with his purse and personal effort to aid him in every good work. On 25th December 1844, Mr Macdonald was translated to Glen Urquhart. This is a large parish. It was then estimated at nearly 3000 of a population. The people of this parish had not been favoured since the Reformation with what they esteemed a truly gospel ministry. Still, at the time of Mr Macdonald’s settlement, it contained a great number of intelligent and godly men. His settlement was of the most harmonious kind. The church is seated for eleven hundred; but when full it can accommodate a hundred more. He catechised that large congregation twice every year, and preached three times every Sabbath to the close of his ministry. He put down shebeening and the drinking habits which prevailed when he entered on his labours among them. He was a great friend to Sabbath schools. Few ministers took a more lively interest than he did in young men of any promise, especially those looking forward to the Christian ministry. He watched the boys in school, and encouraged such as shewed signs of talent. He was cheerful, affable, and kind among his people. He was faithful to their souls, and never lost an opportunity of appealing to their consciences.

He was married a second time (10th November 1846) to Miss Jane Elder, a daughter of Mr John Elder, Sleat, Skye, who survived him a few years. After a short illness, brought on it may be said accidentally, he entered the joy of his Lord, amid the tears and lamentations of his deeply-attached flock, on the 15th August 1864, having completed his seventy-third year, retaining his mental and bodily vigour to the end.

I may best portray his character by giving two short sketches, written by friends who knew him well and loved him dearly. The first is from the Rev. James Macdonald, Urray:- “He was conscientious and active in his preparations for his pulpit work. I never knew one who was so well acquainted with his Bible, and who quoted it so much and so well in his preaching. He was very much given to prayer in his study, which was a very favourite place of his. He was a doctrinal, practical, earnest, and lively preacher. He was much attached to his people, and they were much attached to him. I never knew one who respected the office of the Christian ministry more highly than he did; and certainly he himself brought no shade of dishonour on it. He was very helpful to young men studying for the ministry. He was a most enjoyable companion, full of life and anecdote. He was an excellent divine, a thorough Calvinist, and a truly Christian man. His ministry was blessed to not a few. His mind was of a very inquisitive cast. He was a fair scholar, and read a great deal, and had a most retentive memory. He was a steady friend, and exceedingly charitable, especially to the Lord’s people.”

The other is from the Rev. A. Sinclair, Kenmore, a native of Urquhart: “Mr Macdonald had a fine presence; he was tall and dignified, with a good countenance; his hair latterly silvered with grey, a pair of dark-blue eyes that shone with intelligence and intense earnestness as he warmed up in course of preaching. His preaching was quite of a Puritan stamp, Calvinistic in doctrine and practical in application, very clear, which shewed that he not only studied his subject thoroughly, but that he had also a firm grasp of it. His meaning could not be mistaken; and as his preaching was thoroughly evangelical, it was highly appreciated. His sermons were really instructive. He usually divided his text into three heads, devoting a service to the exposition of each; and at the close he wound up with a summary of the leading ideas of the whole subject. These closing addresses were masterpieces, and usually delivered with a fervour and eloquence which made a deep impression.”

After these portraits by friends who knew him well, little more need be said to fill up the picture. There are some things, however, which require to be mentioned. He took little to do with church courts beyond the duties which devolved on him as a member of Presbytery. He was thoroughly conversant with the laws of the Church, and the rules which regulate procedure in her courts. He was one of the Highland ministers who preached before the Inverness Assembly. His text was as characteristic of the man as it was suitable for the occasion, “Let the children of Zion be joyful in their king” (Psalm 149:2). From the beginning of his ministry onwards he put forth every effort to cultivate that portion of the vineyard which the Lord had specially assigned to himself. His intense love for his people and his home rendered duty in this line both pleasant and enjoyable. He assisted, however, at some of the communions in the neighbourhood. He was regularly at Urray. Brought up among the godly in Caithness, and much in contact with the Ross-shire men during his sojourn in the manse of Ferintosh, he knew them to be the evangelical minister’s best friends, and he cherished to the end of his life the highest esteem for their deep experimental piety and spiritual intelligence. His love of the beauties of nature was very great. These rich and varied beauties which so awakened his delight were but the outward drapery which revealed to him a richer and still more varied beauty which lay beyond nature. These outward and lower beauties were to him the medium through which he looked inward and upward to the spiritual and the eternal. The contemplation of nature’s beauties made him not unfrequently the subject of an experience, faintly at least, resembling that of Moses on Pisgah, when the beauties of the earthly Canaan spread out before him passed like a dissolving view into the glories of Immanuel’s land. We well remember seeing him stand in front of his manse, on a fine summer afternoon, radiant with delight at the beauties of nature around him, and in two minutes thereafter we found him in his study, prostrate before the Lord, lost in earnest prayer. His delight in his work was very great. The church is about a mile from the manse; and we have seen him hurry away a whole hour before service began, impatient to be engaged in his much loved work. The glance with which he surveyed his congregation as he appeared in the pulpit was quite radiant, and was only surpassed by the joyousness of his countenance when they were singing the last psalm. His two last texts were singularly significant and appropriate: “What think ye of Christ?” and, “I was glad when they said unto me, Let us go into the house of the Lord.” It was thus his ministry closed. “The generation of the upright shall be blessed.” 

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 John Macdonald, D.D.

Author: Rev. Thomas McLauchlan, D.D., Edinburgh
Source: Disruption Worthies: A Memorial of 1843, page 357

John MacDonald

Among the great names that adorned the Disruption Church, none was held in higher esteem in the Northern Counties of Scotland, and among many in the South, than that of Dr Macdonald of Ferintosh. In the Highlands he was known as “Ministear mòr na Tòisidheachd.” It is not consistent with fact to say, that in matters of religion the Highlanders are the mere followers of their popular ministers. There were popular ministers in the Highlands whom the people forsook, because of their deserting what they held to be the cause of truth at the period of the Disruption. Yet in no part of the country are ministers of power and grace more esteemed than in the Highlands, and it cannot be questioned that the teaching and example of such ministers exercised a vast influence over the popular mind in 1843, and of none more than the subject of our sketch.

We learn from Dr Kennedy‘s biography of Dr Macdonald, that he was born in the parish of Reay, in Caithness, on the 12th November 1779. His father, James Macdonald, or McAdie, as he was called, in accordance with Celtic usage, which distinguishes the septs in the same tribe, was a man of note among the religious community. He was early brought to the saving knowledge of divine truth; and at a later period he was, with universal consent, appointed catechist of his native parish. For this post he was admirably qualified by both his gifts and his graces, and he retained the affection and esteem of the godly over a wide district unchanged to the end of a long life of ninety-seven years. The part of the country where he resided was at the time much torn by religious differences. The people in a body adhered to the Church of Scotland, but within the Church they were much divided. James held firmly by the Church and its ordinances, while he maintained Christian fellowship with the truly good who had separated themselves. He was a man of a bold, and yet a loving spirit. His aim was to win souls to Christ. On one occasion he met the leader of the separatist party in the parish, who began to reprove him as being too soft, and told him he should be more faithful in denouncing sinners. It was the habit of the people of the Highlands at the time to send their horses away to the hills in summer, where they were set loose; and there was often some difficulty afterwards in taking them when required. James’s reply to his neighbour’s reproof was, “Well, let you and me go to the hill, John, to catch the horses; take you a whip, and I’ll take a sheaf of corn, and see which of us will be most successful.”

John Macdonald was the worthy son of such a father. At school he soon took the highest place, and at college, which he attended in King’s College, Aberdeen, he was one of the most distinguished students. He especially excelled in Mathematics—a science which he cultivated to the last days of his life. It was during his school and college days that he was brought to the knowledge of saving truth. Dr Kennedy specifies the three means which the Spirit of God appears to have employed in bringing about this great end. They were the early teaching and example of his father, the writings of Jonathan Edwards, and the preaching of the Rev. J. Robertson of Achrenny Mission, afterwards of Kingussie.

In 1805, he was licensed by the Presbytery of Caithness to preach the Gospel. Previous to his ordination he officiated as missionary in Achrenny and Halladale for some months, and in 1806 he was ordained to the mission charge at Berriedale—all in the Presbytery of Caithness.

His incumbency here was a very short one, and in January 1807 he was translated to what was then the Gaelic Chapel of Edinburgh, as successor to the Rev. James Maclauchlan, afterwards of Moy. When he came first to Edinburgh, he had little of the power in preaching to which he afterwards attained. He was sound, clear, and accurate; but somewhat stiff in his manner and delivery. This might have arisen from various causes, but mainly, no doubt, was the result of youth and inexperience. Gradually this sense of constraint wore away, and he came to speak in public with wonderful eloquence and power. It was once said to the writer by an old Edinburgh hearer of his, “It was here that he got his wings.” During his Edinburgh ministry an attempt was made to introduce English preaching in the afternoon into the Gaelic congregation, to meet the wishes of hundreds who wished to benefit by Mr Macdonald’s ministry; but the more ardent Celts among the people resisted the change strenuously and successfully. To meet the desire, however, Mr Macdonald resolved to preach English at night,—thus undertaking three regular services each Lord’s day. With week-day meetings and visitations, this made his life a busy one. It was also a useful one, for during his Edinburgh ministry he had many souls for his hire. His ministry in Edinburgh extended over a period of six years; and in 1813 he was presented to the Parish of Ferintosh in Ross-shire, vacant by the death of the excellent and much-esteemed Mr. Charles Calder. The scene when he parted with his Edinburgh flock was a somewhat remarkable one. He had preached in Gaelic as usual during the day, taking farewell of the people; and at night the English congregation met in the usual place of worship in North College Street. Ere the service began, the crowd collecting was such that there was no prospect of their finding accommodation in the church, although it could accommodate eleven hundred worshippers. Mr Macdonald was just going to the pulpit, when it was proposed that a request should be made for the use of the West Church for the occasion. A messenger was sent for the keys, which were readily given. The West Church was opened, and Mr Macdonald putting himself at the head of his congregation, they marched westward through the Grassmarket, and soon filled the church to the roof. Here amidst the tears and sobs of many, he took farewell of his English-speaking hearers, who had for years enjoyed and profited by his earnest ministry.

In due time he was settled in Ferintosh, where he continued to minister with great success till the year 1849, a period of forty-two years. Much of his time was spent in assisting brother ministers at their communions. In such services he was acceptable to both ministers and people, many of the ministers who differed widely from him on ecclesiastical questions making him heartily welcome. This he owed much to his kind, genial, and brotherly disposition, which displayed itself so pleasantly in the family circle, his interesting conversation, and especially his fund of anecdote, all making him a favourite with old and young. Many ministers’ sons and daughters, who were young at the time, remember well how welcome he was at their fathers’ fireside. By the people his appearance was hailed with enthusiasm, thousands collected to hear the Word at his mouth, and many of these gatherings were followed by rich and abounding spiritual blessings.

He took a deep interest in the distant island of St. Kilda. At the instance of the Society in Scotland for Propagating Christian Knowledge, he visited the island four times in as many different years, and preached to the people, at the time without a minister, the gospel of salvation. Besides these visits, so much valued by the people, he made strenuous efforts to secure the erection of a church and manse in the island, and on his last visit, in 1827, accompanied by the minister appointed by the Society which he represented, he found the buildings completed, and provision made for the regular maintenance of gospel ordinances. For many years the Free Church has maintained a minister on the island.

In 1827, he paid a visit to Ireland, at the request of Mr Daly, afterwards Bishop of Cashel, with a view to preaching the Gospel to the Irish in their native tongue. He studied the Irish dialect of the Gaelic language, and preached frequently in that dialect to the people along the south-west coast.

Dr Macdonald’s zeal for preaching the Gospel led him sometimes into difficulties. In the year 1817, he preached in a Dissenting chapel in Strathbogie, without the consent of the parish minister. For this he was brought before the General Assembly, where, although no special censure was passed upon him, such proceedings were severely censured.

His ministry was richly blessed of God. Perhaps no minister of modern times was more owned as the means of converting souls. While in Edinburgh, he took a deep and active interest in the great revival at Muthil, under the ministry of the Rev. Mr Russell. Soon after his removal to Ferintosh, a deeply interesting movement took place among his own people. After that the Word was much blessed on both sides of Loch Tay, and in Glenlyon; and he frequently visited the district and preached with great power and success. The fruits of the revival of religion there are visible to this day. There were great spiritual movements in Ross-shire, the revivals in Kilsyth and Dundee took place, and in all these Dr Macdonald took his share of the work with warm interest. Wherever he heard of the Lord’s cause prospering, he made a point of being present to help it forward.

Though not disposed to take much part in ecclesiastical controversy, he found no difficulty in taking his side when the great questions of Non-Intrusion and Spiritual Independence arose for discussion in the Church. He became a firm supporter of the policy of the Evangelical party; and his weight of character and influence over the popular mind aided much the cause which they maintained in the north. At the Disruption he took a foremost place, and was selected to preach the first sermon in Tanfield Hall. His text was John 15:16. He showed the power of the principle which actuated him by the extent of the sacrifice which he made, for the living of the parish of Ferintosh was one of the largest in that part of the country. He was not in the habit of referring often to ecclesiastical subjects in the pulpit; but, preaching at Edinburgh, in the Gaelic Church, soon after the Disruption, he said of the Established Church as it then existed, that it was “a Christ-denying, God-dishonouring, and soul-destroying Church.” These were strong words—too strong, perhaps, for courtesy or for charity, but he spoke under a deep sense of wrong done to the cause of Christ. He was much censured for using them, but it does not appear that he ever withdrew, or even modified them afterwards.

At the Inverness Assembly he was associated, as Gaelic Moderator, with Dr McFarlan of Greenock, the Moderator for the year. In this capacity he preached a Gaelic sermon at the opening of the Assembly and many who were then present still remember the mingled feeling of amusement and admiration which pervaded the house as he announced his text, and proceeded to expound it. The words were, “These, who have turned the world upside down, are come hither also.” The sermon was one in every way worthy of his fame, and a complete vindication of the Disruption.

On the 18th of April 1849, he was called to his rest, leaving behind him a name fragrant and precious among thousands, and which shall not be forgotten, especially in the Highlands, so long as Gospel truth is prized by the people.

Dr Buchanan, in his Ten Years’ Conflict, says:—-

Source: Disruption Worthies of the Highlands , page 17

This source gives the above account and adds the following:

The following interesting reminiscences of Dr Macdonald are given by the Rev. Allan Sinclair, of the Free Church, Kenmore, in the Memoir of Campbell of Kiltearn:

“My father used to tell, that early in the century, he remembered hearing Dr Macdonald at Invermoriston. This was before his ordination at Berriedale. He was on his way from the Western Highlands, where he had been collecting information for the late Sir John Sinclair, anent the authenticity of Ossian’s poems. He was from the very outset of his ministry an evangelist, and availed himself of opportunities to preach the Word. On this occasion he sent a message from Fort Augustus to Invermoriston, that he would give an address there. He was dressed after the fashion of the day, in a long black cassock, and skin-tight trousers, or ‘trews’; which, my father said, shewed off his fine manly frame to great advantage. After the service of the day was over, my grandfather, an old godly venerable man, remarked, ‘If I am not mistaken, that young man will make himself known.’ Years after this on his way to Ferintosh from Skye, he sent intimation he would preach at Invermoriston. The people were glad. An open-air chapel was extemporised in a quiet sheltered nook. He was fresh from scenes of revival, and preached with great power, from the words of Paul to the Philippian jailor. The impression of that day was extraordinary. The place was like a battle-field strewed with the dead and dying. Not a few survived to testify that the Lord was of a truth present that day.

“The next incident was at a Communion Sabbath at Ferintosh. It was his first Communion there. His wife had died the previous week, and his elders waited upon him to suggest that the Communion should be postponed. ‘No, no,’ he said, ‘let not my wife’s death interfere with commemorating the death of my Saviour. I feel very unfit for my share of the service, but there are able ministers engaged to carry on the work.’ His text was Hosea 2:19: ‘I will betroth thee unto me for ever.’ From these words he preached the action sermon, a discourse of great power. A deep impression was made upon the audience, numbering probably ten thousand. So much were his brethren who assisted convinced of this, that they urged him to close the service. He consented, and preached from Psa. 45:10: ‘Hearken, O daughter, and consider, and incline thine ear,’ &c. He applied the subject from the words addressed to Rebecca, ‘Wilt thou go with this man?’ (Gen. 24:58). The impression already made was greatly deepened. The feelings of the audience were overpowering. Urging acceptance of Jesus upon them with extraordinary fervour, he put the question once more, ‘Wilt thou go with this man?’ A tall middle-aged woman in the heart of the congregation started to her feet, tossed her arms into the air, and exclaimed in tones heard over the vast audience, ‘Thèid, Thèid, O, Theid!’ (‘I will, I will, O I will!’) The preacher replied, ‘God grant thee that grace, and to all present here this day!’ The great congregation broke down. It was a scene never to be forgotten. The Burn of Ferintosh was a Bochim indeed that day. Such was the weeping, the crying, the commotion among the people, that the preacher’s voice was drowned. Amid this glorious triumph of the King of Zion, the day came to a close, memorable among the many memorable days of the ministry of this eminent and dear servant of the Lord Jesus.

“The following incident I have from one to whom Dr Macdonald himself told it. It was at a Communion season in Milton Church, Glasgow. On Saturday evening after thinking over his subjects for the following day, he chose a passage for the evening address. But he could not lay his mind to it. The words of Paul to the jailor, ‘Do thyself no harm,’ were powerfully impressed upon him. He took these words. That Sabbath evening a poor strayed woman was on her way to drown herself in the Clyde. Passing the church, she heard the voice of praise, and paused to listen. By some powerful impulse, she entered the lobby of the church. As she entered, the preacher gave out his text, ‘Do thyself no harm.’ The words sounded in her ears as a voice from heaven. She thought in herself, they are spoken to me; and so they were. That night her soul was quickened; light dawned upon her. She abandoned her purpose, became an anxious inquirer; and that evening found the Lord. ‘Is not this a brand plucked from the burning?’

“Dr Macdonald came for thirty-six years to my native parish (Glen Urquhart) to assist at the Communion. They were times of great refreshing to a people who all the year round sat under a dead ministry. I remember, and ever shall, the thrill of that emotional, powerful voice. I sat in the gallery of the church, in a front seat, while he preached from the words, ‘We would see Jesus.’ The thrill of his voice was such, that I felt as if raised from my seat by some invisible power, and in danger of falling over the gallery. There was a strange power in the thrill of Macdonald’s voice. A minister told us – an aged minister of Christ – that on a certain occasion, while hearing him at Strathpeffer, he never knew the meaning of the passage, ‘My word is spirit,’ as he did that day. Such was his emotion, that lest he should disturb the meeting, he rose and retired. Truly he was one of the ascension-gifts of the risen and exalted Saviour, to the land of our birth – the dear old Highlands of Scotland. May the Repairer of breaches give us many more such men !”

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 Dr Macdonald, Ferintosh
Fragments of Traditional Information

Author: Rev. Principal Macleod, D.D.
Source: The Monthly Record of the Free Church of Scotland, 1928, page 225 etc.

Dr Kennedy of Dingwall once said to a young minister: “Dr MacDonald was that one of the fathers that I knew who was most highly honoured by his Master, and he was the humblest of them all.” “Was there any special reason,” was the reply, “by way of cross or crook in lot that kept him humble?” “That is not the way,” said Dr Kennedy, “in which I explain the matter to myself at all. What I think accounted for it was the view that he had of the grace of the gospel.” It is now almost eighty years since Dr MacDonald died. But the memory of his name lives, and it will be a sad day for the North of Scotland when he shall be forgotten.

A few months ago there was, if we mistake not, a memorable centenary of which we did not observe that any great note was taken. We believe that it was on the 25th of June 1827 that the flood tide was reached of the great awakening of Uig in Lewis. Dr George Smeaton, who took a special interest in these things, said to a friend who belonged to Uig that the awakening of that parish was the purest religious revival that he knew of in the history of the Church in Scotland, unless the awakening of Arran surpassed it in freedom from wildfire and fanaticism. It was so free from excesses and its fruit was so lasting. No one that knows Dr Kennedy’s Apostle of the North – the life of Dr Macdonald – can fail to have felt impressed by the interest that he took in St Kilda. It was on the occasion of one of his visits to St Kilda that be found his way to Uig. The visit was not a premeditated one. Dr Macdonald having sailed out for the Ocean Rock was carried back to the shores of Harris. Learning of the Uig Communion, he and his son who accompanied him found a guide who brought them through the rough country that lay between them and Uig, and if I remember aright, they arrived at the manse of Uig on the Friday night. Of course, in such circumstances their arrival was not expected, and the people did not know of it until the Doctor appeared in the preaching tent on Saturday. It was expected that Mr William Macrae of Barvas would have that day’s service. It is said that one of the godly Gaelic teachers from Assynt – I think it was Murdo Mackenzie who was at Laxay in Lochs – was so displeased that one like Mr William should have the Saturday service, that without absenting himself from the congregation he determined that he should not witness what he thought was a tarnishing of the glory. So he sat with his back to the back of the tent. When the psalm was given out for singing, he said to himself, “He cannot spoil that on me at any rate.” Then came the prayer, and as it went on he said, “Pity on him who would say that Mr William has no grace (‘S mairg a theireadh nach’eil grås aig Maighstir Uilleam). The prayer went on and the hearer became more interested, “If I have grace myself,” said he, “Mr William has it too (“Ma tha grae agam fhein tha gras aig Maighatir Uilleam”). The prayer went on still further and still the interest grew, until the hearer said, “I would give my oath for it that Mr William has grace” (“Bheirinnse mo mhionnan gu’m bheil gras aig Maighstir Uilleam”). This was the beginning of Dr Macdonald’s first service in Uig.

On the following day the Doctor preached again and he preached with the Holy Ghost sent down from heaven. The great congregation was smitten as by a mighty wind and the people were laid prostrate on the earth. There were loud outcries. To secure order the Dr interrupted his sermon and gave out a few verses to sing. The precentors, for there were two of them, as there still are in Lewis on a Communion Sabbath, were Malcolm Macritchie and Angus Maciver. They sang; but the congregation were overcome with silence. Dr Macdonald stood behind them singing, and it is said then in the congregation of many thousands these were the only voices to be heard. The awakening of Uig which had been in progress for some time under the ministry of the worthy Alexander Macleod, the minister of the parish, now came to a head. This great day of the Gospel was one of the tokens that John Macdonald’s Master gave to show His approval of His faithful servant, and it was the preaching that was attended by such power and blessing that won for the minister of Ferintosh the name of “The Apostle of the North.”

One of his old hearers used to tell with great gusto of a fool he once knew; and his friends had their own thoughts as to who the fool was. This fool came to learn something of his own sin. It came so home to him that he thought not only that he was the greatest of all sinners, but that he ought to let the world know what a sinner he was. In these days the greatest gathering in the Highlands used to be at the Communion services in the Burn of Ferintosh. So he made up his mind to rise at the end of a service before the people dispersed and proclaim in their hearing what a great sinner he was. The service came to an end. He rose to speak; but before he got a word uttered Dr Macdonald was on his feet again, and pointing to him said, “My lad, I have something to say to you. Don’t you reveal what God has concealed, and take this with you, ‘The blood of Jesus Christ, His Son cleanseth us from all sin’.” “‘Ghille, tha rud agam ri’rådh rint. An rud a cheil Dia na cuir thus an ceill agus thoir so leat, ‘Glanaidh fuil losa Criosd a Mhic sinn o gach uile pheacadh’.”)

Dr Macdonald was like the Apostle “in journeyings oft”. On one of his long journeys to preach the Gospel he lost his way. But as the night was coming down he came across a poor house in a lonely spot. He did not know what it was. It was the home of a notorious poacher. The poacher was not at home. But his wife was; and the welcome that she gave to the stranger was a very surly one. He was let into the house. But he was also told that he could not stay there for the night. He answered
that he meant to stay, but was told that one would soon come who would turn him out of doors. In due course the poacher came home and, as his wife expected, was not too pleased to see a visitor before him. He ordered the stranger out. But the stranger said that if he was to go out he must be put out. The poacher caught him. They wrestled and the poacher found that he had met with more than his match. When the Doctor got him down he made him promise before he let him up that he would never again turn a forlorn stranger out of doors. Then the Doctor proposed to hold household worship and held it. He told his host where he was going and got him to undertake to be his guide. His physical prowess won the respect of his unwilling host, who went with him to the place where he was to preach. He waited to hear the sermon, and that sermon was the turning point in his life.

A like tale is told of how the Doctor heard a tinker piper making a mess of a piece that he was playing. The discord jarred on the ear of one who himself had been a piper. He asked for the pipes that he might teach the blunderer how he should play the tune. When he had done with the pipes he told the man to come to such and such a place next day and he might teach him a new tune. The tinker with bag-pipes and all duly appeared in the congregation and got good of the sermon. So he learned a new song. In his early days the Doctor was not only a piper but a good one; and this in after years helped to get him in through doors that would otherwise have been barred against him. In his youthful ministry, when he had the Gaelic Church in Edinburgh, it happened that a Highland regiment came to the Castle. Dr Macdonald went to call on the Commanding Officer for permission to preach to his men. This was refused. As he was going away the Doctor found one of the regimental pipers bungling a tune that he was practising. He asked the man to let him have the pipes, and he played for him the tune as it should be played. This took place outside the Colonel’s quarters, and he saw through the window what happened. He sent for the minister to come back and freely gave him the permission that he had refused a few minutes before. It was during that short ministry in Edinburgh that Norman Macleod, the future lay evangelist of Skye was converted. Mr Lachlan Mackenzie of Lochcarron preached that day. It was at Assembly time. Soon after, when Norman came to be known as a serious man, Dr Macdonald called him for the first time to pray in public. The soldier was taken aback at this call, but the minister reassured him. “Rise, Norman, and we shall do what we can to support you.” Once, when in later years Dr. Macdonald preached in Edinburgh, he had as a hearer Dr Chalmers, who on his way home made the remark: “I see what is the secret of Macdonald’s power. He preaches Justification by Faith!” It was a conjunction of great lights.

Dr Macdonald was the pet aversion of the “Moderates,” and, as a rule, if they could they kept him out of their preserves. In some cases however, it was otherwise. Mr Murdo Cameron of Creich for one used to have him year by year to preach at his Communion services. There was another of the “Moderates” in the Highlands of Perthshire whose Presbytery had a use and wont of its own. It met four times a year, and the regular practice was that at each meeting the Presbytery were invited to dinner by the Moderator for the time being. This member of Presbytery was well known for his convivial qualities and as one of the best fiddlers in the countryside. When there was a merry-making on foot he was very much at home. At these gatherings he was not an ascetic when the wine of the country was flowing. On one such occasion he drank so freely that before all was done he fell on the fire. News of this went abroad and the Presbytery felt that something must be done. They were all too vulnerable in regard to the free use of the bottle themselves for any one of them to call for discipline, such as a case of glaring drunkenness demanded. But the clergy put their heads together and decided that their errant brother should be sent to Coventry. So it was resolved that the Moderator should not invite him to the next Presbytery dinner. The Presbytery met in ordinary course and, according to agreement, the Moderator invited members to dine with him, all but the black sheep. The brother banished to Coventry saw at once what this meant and his pride was touched. He thought himself as good as any of them. So he bethought himself what would gall his co-presbyters more than anything else. He concluded that they would feel nothing more keenly than that Macdonald of Ferintosh should be permitted to preach within their bounds. He asked the “wild” man from Ross-shire to come to his Communion services and left the whole of them in his hands from Thursday to Monday. Year by year this took place, and Dr Macdonald and his comrade. Mr John Kennedy of Redcastle, thus found in the heart of a “Moderate” preserve an open door for preaching the good news of the Kingdom of God. Satan for all his cleverness can outwit himself.

In those days, when travelling not done on foot was done either by coach or on horseback, the manses along the high road came to be recognised houses of call when ministers were riding to preach at Communion seasons. Once upon a time Dr Macdonald, whose parish of Ferintosh was to the north of Mr Kennedy’s parish of Redcastle, was riding with his comrade on one of their expeditions to Breadalbane. They came to the manse of Alvie, where dwelt another John Macdonald, who was also one of another kind. Bishop John, as he was called, was a very pronounced anti-evangelical. He was also a bit of a bard in his native Gaelic. The two travellers duly arrived. Their host met them and in impromptu verse, which was not above the standard of doggerel, he extended to his visitors a left-handed welcome. Of this verse there are two versions which do not differ materially. Pointing to John Kennedy, the minister of Alvie said:

“Ceannaideach a’ Chaisteil Ruaidh,
‘Aran cruaidh gun annlan.”

“Is mar a’s fhaid’ a theid thu Tuath
“Sann a’s fuair’ tha’n geamhradh.”

The variant runs:

“Ceannaideach a’ Chaisteil Ruaidh,
‘Aran tioram agus cruaidh,
Is mar a’s fhaid’ a theid thu Tuath
Sann a’s fuair’ tha’n geamhradh.”

This being translated in its own strain would read:

“Kennedy of Castle Red,
Dry and hard is his bread,
And the farther north you tread
The colder is the winter.”

“Hard crusts and dry bread,
And the farther north you go
The colder still does winter grow.”

When Dr Macdonald did work in the Alvie district of Badenoch, he used to have a home from home at Lynwilg as Captain Gordon’s guest.

A hundred years ago Ross-shire had a number of ministers that filled their coats well. The neighbouring county of Sutherland had a number that were spare in flesh. Dr Macdonald was once asked in this connection, “Ciod e a’s coireach ministearan Ros a bhi cho coltach agus ministearan Chataobh a bhi cho caol?” (Why is it that the Ross-shire ministers look so well while the ministers of Sutherland are sо lean?”) His answer was one that left out the ministers of Sutherland. Tha ministearan Ros ag iarruidh beannachd an Ti a tha riaghladh air na dh’itheas iad.” (“The ministers of Ross ask the blessing of Him that rules, on what they eat.”) But Sutherland claimed to be upsides with Ross when they said that the preaching of the Gospel was in Ross, but the fruit of the Gospel was in Sutherland. There was of old a keen rivalry between these neighbours.

The fact that Dr Macdonald had been a piper in early life was not allowed to be forgotten. Duin’ an Torr, as James Mackay of Proncy in Dornoch was called, was once giving an account of how he got on at Tain Communion, to which he had gone. The season might be spoken of as a feill or feast. So also might a fair or market be described, and at these old markets there used to be piping and dancing. James said, “Chaidh mi gu Baile Dhubhthaich do’n fheill agus ‘nuair a rainig mi bha Ian a’ piobaireachd, is cha b’fhada nach robh mi fhin anns an ruidhle” (“I went to Tain to the fair, and when I reached it John was piping, and it was not long until I was in the reel.”} When he reached Tain Dr Macdonald was preaching, and he was not long a hearer until his heart was dancing to the music of the good news he was hearing. So our old worthies could shroud their meaning under the cloak of figures. For a few years Dr Macdonald had as his neighbours John Macrae of Knockbain, who had been a shepherd, and George Macleod of Maryburgh, who had kept a hostelry. The three were to preach during the same Communion season, and one who was asked who the preachers were to be answered,” Piobair as an Toisidheachd, ciobair as a’ Chnocbhân agus osdair a Baile-mairi.” (“A piper from Ferintosh, a shepherd from Knockbain and an hosteller from Maryburgh.”) In a like case Peggie Macdiarmid answered, “Mr Kennedy, Mr Macdonald, and the minister of the Sanctuary.” When Dr Macdonald would be weeks away from home, there would be an accumulation of parish business awaiting his return. He liked to face this task, not jaded and worn out with travel, but fresh and vigorous. So he was wont, before going to Ferintosh, to turn aside to John Macrae’s manse in Knockbain. There he would rest for three days or so, and when he was refreshed he rode home, and reaching it fresh and lively, he was in a fit condition to start dealing with the heap of things that called for his attention.

Dr Macdonald’s genial disposition often stood him in good stead and won for him the hearts of those that otherwise would have stood aloof from him and have kept him at arm’s length. One of his neighbours in the ministry, who was unevangelical, was prejudiced against him. But the Doctor paid him a friendly visit, and was so genial and kindly in his conversation that he softened the old man’s heart and smoothed away the edge of his prejudice. The musty manuscripts of the “Moderate” were not immune to the ravages of the mice. This gave trouble. Dr Macdonald, speaking in a figure of the mice that have their lodgment within and make encroachments on the treasures of memory, complained of the harm that the mice did to his old sermons. He struck a string that awoke in response. His old neighbour had his own quarrel with the mice, and a fellow feeling makes us wondrous kind. Dr Macdonald could not be such a bad fellow after all. The upshot of it was that he was asked to preach to his neighbour’s flock. He often preached for his neighbours on week-days, and the memory still lives of how in the last years of Dr Bayne of Kiltarlity, when he was not able to preach steadily to his people, his young friend from Ferintosh gave his people a sermon on Wednesdays. His settlement of a vexatious discipline case for his aged friend made people say that, if he had become an advocate, there would have been none to beat him at cross-examining and eliciting the truth

In the years that he lived after the Disruption Dr Macdonald, though he was in his seventh decade, did not lessen his activity in his Master’s work. On one of his visits to the West Highlands he preached in Lochaber, and one of subjects was “The Strait Gate.” After laying stress on how strait it is he flung out his arms their full length and said, “Strait and all as it is, it is as wide open as that to all that are but willing to enter in.” This remark an old hearer carried with him to Canada, and about sixty years after he told it with appreciation when he was past his fourscore and ten.

In earlier days the Doctor was often in Skye, first with his friend Mr Shaw, of Bracadale, and then with Mr Shaw’s successor, Mr Roderick Macleod, who was later minister of Snizort. It is told that when Mr Martin, of Kilmuir, was translated to the Chapel of Ease at Inverness. before he went to Abernethy in Strathspey an offer of the Parish of Kilmuir was made to Dr Macdonald, but he refused it. The awakening of Skye was going on under the teaching of Donald Munro, the blind catechist. Dr Macdonald and Mr Martin met, and the Doctor said to his friend, “You did not think it worth your while to stay in Kilmuir, and I did not think it worth my while to go there, but the Lord has raised up there a greater witness than either of us.” On one of his visits to help Mr Roderick, there was an arrangement made that he should preach in a parish whose minister was not sympathetic with his evangelical message. The people gathered for the sermon, but at the last moment the incumbent of the parish imposed his veto; there must be no preaching. That did not, however, mean that there might be no praying. The visitor did not let the people go without a word of prayer and the word was good measure, heaped up, pressed down, and running over. Indeed its detailed adoration was an opening up of the way of life, while its entreaties were a clear indication of what sinners need to be saved from and believers need to bring them home. Mr Roderick Macleod could say of it that though he was no lover of preaching prayers, he could not but approve of this one. The word of God was not to be bound.

In Disruption days the many thousands used to gather to Snizort. At one such gathering Mr Macleod spoke to the vast concourse, and, doubtful as to whether they could all hear him, he said that though he might not make himself heard, yet when his father should rise to speak, they would all hear him. The Doctor rose, and with the one gesticulation of holding in the one hand a pocket Testament that he sometimes struck on the other hand, he was easily heard to the outskirts of the great throng. The voice, whose words on a clear day could be made out a mile behind the speaker, was one that carried far. In the days when the parish of Portree was a preserve within which no strolling Evangelical vagrant might preach, Dr Macdonald was free to preach in the Parish of Snizort on the very borders of Portree. When once he was preaching at such a spot there was an old man on the edge of the crowd, where he might be seen of all, who leaned his weight on his shepherd’s staff as he bent over it to listen to the preacher. This gave the Doctor a ready illustration. He was speaking of the ground on which a sinner may build his hope of salvation, and the relation in which faith stands to the righteousness of Christ, which is that ground. “Look,” said he, “at that old man. On what does he rest his weight? His staff on which he leans rests on the solid ground. The staff has its own work to do in holding him up. It is by means of it that he leans his weight on that on which it rests. Without a foundation the staff would have no resting-place, and without the staff, which holds him up as he bends over it, he would fall. So it is by faith that a sinner rests on the righteousness of the Son of God.”

In the eventful year of the Disruption the Highland fishermen at Wick sent to the head quarters of the Free Church a request that Dr Macdonald should be sent to preach to them. For years before Sandy Gair had conducted services among this fishing population. The Doctor was sent, and as such he was the first Church deputy to the fishing stations. Being a Caithness man himself he knew well the kind of situation he had to handle. So he did not interfere with the meeting that Sandy held, but began his service with the gathered fishermen when Sandy was done with his. Thus things went on in a friendly fashion. One Monday morning Sandy called early to see the Doctor, who had not yet come downstairs. The landlady met the visitor at the door and was explaining to him that he could not see the minister yet. The Doctor, overhearing the conversation, called out to her, asking her to show Sandy upstairs. “Indeed, no,” said Sandy, “he has more need to come down than I have to go up.” He did not lose his chance of having a thrust at a minister. It is good to bring a man down who is higher up than he should be. His victim took the answer good-humouredly and laughed his appreciation of it.

About the year 1839 there was a remarkable movement in Easter Ross under Dr Macdonald’s preaching. It told in particular on Portmahomack in the parish of Tarbat. In this parish the Doctor’s son in the faith, Mr David Campbell, was minister. When this movement was arousing attention Mr Campbell’s friend. Mr Stewart of Cromarty, went to visit him to see for himself if it was only a time of sensational and emotional excitement or if it was a real awakening to spiritual conviction and concern. He saw some of the converts and questioned them. One of them told vividly how when he was awakened to concern he felt himself to be shut in by the justice of God as a mighty mountain to an ocean of everlasting destruction. So touching were his words that his querist was ready to cry out himself, and as the outcome of his queries he was more disposed to question his own conversion than that of the Portmahomack fisher-folk. At the next Dornoch Communion the fourth table, which held sixty communicants, was wholly filled by the young converts from Tarbat. When the service was over the linen cloth was as wet with their tears as though it had been taken out of the sea. Soon afterwards the plague of cholera visited Portmahomack and made a clean sweep of this crop of young converts. One who remembered them said that the Lord took them home with Him to heaven soft and warm as they were.

In those days of awakening there lived in a wood near Geanies an old man whose only daughter kept house for him. She was one of the awakened, and in her excitement her reason was touched. After the way of the time she was kept at home tied in her bed. There she remained for some time as a prisoner. But one day as her father came in she said to him in a calm voice, “Father, loosen the rope, please, and give me the comb that I may comb my hair.” “My poor dear,” was the answer, “that I would gladly do if it were only safe for me to do so.” “It is quite safe, father, for the Lord has spoken to my heart and said that He has blotted out my sins as a thick cloud and I shall not be left long with you.” The bonds that held her were undone. She rose and dressed with the light of reason restored and the hope of eternal life in her heart. But, as she said, she was not long left with her father, for in less than a week she passed away. These are crumbs of traditional information.

Christopher Munro, who was Free Church minister at Tobermory, Kilmuir, and Strathy, said that though the greatest sermon to which he had ever listened was from Mr Stewart of Cromarty, the most sustained high-class preaching he had ever known was that of Dr Macdonald. A hundred years ago, as Mr Bannatyne of Oban said, there was a difference between the Evangelicals of Bute, to which he himself belonged, and those of Arran, which is the other half of the County of Bute. The Bute Evangelicals did not think much of a minister unless he belonged to some other place than Bute while their Arran brethren thought little of any minister unless he belonged to their own island. In this connection it used to be told in Arran and some of the old worthles there that Macdonald in his later years preached in Arran and some of the old worthies there were so filled with his teaching that they said, “What a pity he is not from our own island!”

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 Some Missionary Pioneers
I. John Macdonald, Calcutta

Source: The Monthly Record of the Free Church of Scotland, 1932, pages 65-66

It is well over a hundred years ago now since the Northern Missionary Society was set on foot. It showed how the fathers and worthies of our Highlands kept themselves in touch with the efforts that were being put forth in other parts of the land to advance the cause of the Gospel. It was fitting that the district which took up the cause of Foreign Missions so early should contribute not only of its substance and its prayers, but of its sons and daughters to further the kingdom of Christ among the heathen. The evangelical men in the Scottish Church took an early opportunity, after a lively interest in the Mission cause had been awakened, to bring the matter before the General Assembly. This happened in 1796. The Supreme Court of the Church was unresponsive. It was still dominated by the slumberous policy of the eighteenth-century Moderates, but with the reviving of an interest in and appreciation of the Gospel at home, the Church of Scotland was the first of all national Churches to take up the cause, and in Dr Duff she sent forth a worthy representative to carry on her mission work in the East, and there is an interesting link, connecting him, a Perthshire man, with the Missionary Society of the North. His parents were among the fruits of the awakening to spiritual things that took place in the parish of Moulin under the ministry of the devoted and cultured Alexander Stewart, who, after leaving Moulin, was known as Dr Stewart of Dingwall. During his ministry in the capital of Ross-shire Dr Stewart was one of the active members of the Missionary Society. But there are earlier links with Foreign Mission work connected with the district of which Inverness is the centre. Mitchell, of the Bombay Mission, was one of the early agents of Scottish Missions in India, and Dr Wilson, who long presided over the activities of the Bombay Mission, was married to a niece of Dr Ronald Bayne of Kiltarlity. In Bombay Wilson did a work as remarkable as that done by Duff and his brethren in Calcutta. Mrs. Wilson was a lady of rare accomplishments and Christian excellence. She died young, and her biography was one of the works that proved influential in stimulating the notable interest in the cause of Missions that prevailed in the Disruption Church.

I
For the present, however, I should wish to draw attention very briefly to another, and the outstanding, representative of the Highlands in the foreign field. This was John Macdonald of Calcutta, the son of John Macdonald of Ferintosh the Apostle of the North. The future missionary was born in Edinburgh, while his father was minister of the Gaelic Church in that city. But he was a mere child when the house-hold came north to the manse of Ferintosh. John was a precocious boy, and during his school and college course showed himself, if possible, more signally than his father had done, the first man of his year. Before he finished his course at college he was for some time tutor at Westerton, near Elgin or Pluscarden, and it was when he was there that the great change which brings from death to life came over him. Able and amiable, correct and exemplary as he had hitherto been, John Macdonald had not yet come to know either himself or the Lord or the Gospel until this time. The change was a fruitful one, for scarcely ever has there been another such Christian as John Macdonald, so all round, so devoted, such a pattern to believers, in word and doctrine and practice. At the very outset of his new life he taught a Sabbath class, and for them wrote a little tract, which has often been reprinted, called “The Suffering Saviour.” At a very early age he was settled in charge of a Presbyterian congregation in London, and in this charge he laboured with all the ardour of his nature. At that time Edward Irving was disturbing not only the metropolis, but the feeble Presbytery there of which he was the most noted member, by his vagaries in teaching and practice. Young as Macdonald was, he took his full share in the work of bringing the offender to book, for the intensest spirituality in him was not divorced from zeal for truth. During the years of his London ministry he enjoyed the fellowship of many like-minded men in the ministry, either in his own denomination or in other bodies, and any one that knows the eminence of James Harrington Evans among the ministers of his time, will see how fitting it was that John Macdonald should enjoy much of his fellowship during this period of his life. Harrington Evans had been an Episcopal minister, and was much blessed in his work. He became a Baptist, but maintained to the last brotherly fellowship with Christians in other Churches. At an early stage of his career he had been misled into some erroneous views in regard to the Trinity, but when he was brought back to the faith he sounded a singularly definite note on the very subjects where he had been led astray. From the time of his recovery from error he exercised as honoured and richly-blessed a ministry as London has ever seen. Such is the estimate of Dr George Smeaton of his place in the religious life of England. His church was St John’s Chapel, Bedford Row. One of his highly appreciative hearers was Mrs Mary Winslow, whose life reflects his teaching. During John Macdonald’s London days Evans was at the height of his power and influence, and it is pleasant to associate two such lovely characters, not only as contemporaries, but as friends.

Their connection, however, was not destined to be of long duration, for when Dr Duff came back from India and visited the various Presbyteries of the Church of Scotland, on that wonderful tour that did more than almost any thing else to touch the imagination and to awaken the conscience of the Church in regard to her duty to the heathen, he met with John Macdonald, and enlisted him as a recruit for service in the Indian field.

Much opposition was made to the step that the young minister proposed to take. His work was prospering and other fields of usefulness lay open to him at home, but he weighed the matter as his Lord’s servant, and came maturely to the conclusion that he was called to India. The statement of his reasons for taking this step was published, and it is a document that eloquently tells the character of the man who penned it. Only a man of single-hearted devotedness could have looked at the matter as he did, and let come what might his mind was made up to leave the comforts of home and country and face the arduous task of working in the hard field presented by mission work among the Hindus. In those days the voyage to Calcutta was an affair of months, and on the way John Macdonald wrote out for the Press a number of his sermons and discourses as a memento of his ministry in London. They were published as A Pastor’s Memorial, and they afford a specimen of the remarkable preaching gifts of Dr Macdonald’s son. His clear, powerful, and spiritual preaching, as I think Dr Kennedy describes it, had been the rejoicing of his father’s heart, as it had been the rejoicing of many more. It has all the fire, fervour, and earnestness of Richard Baxter at his best, and it is free from those aberrations in doctrine that marred the excellence of the renowned Puritan. It is Westminster theology on fire, or Baxter trained to be orthodox. I do not know that the Highlands have ever produced such another as John Macdonald was, and even in the circle that knew his noble father, this was the impression that he produced. We know what hero-worshippers our Highland people can be, and in his own day Dr Macdonald had his many admirers, but great as many of those acknowledged the father to be, they found language fail them to set forth the sense they had of the surpassing excellence of the son. The men that the pre-Disruption Church sent out to the mission field were the very reverse of her weaklings; they were picked and choice men, and that of a choice generation of men.

It is well known that the methods of Dr Duff’s mission were mainly educational. They aimed at undermining Hindu superstition and idolatry by imparting a sound European education, and accompanying this process of undermining with the inculcation of Gospel truth. What was sought was to win men who should be efficient instruments for the evangelisation of their countrymen, and in those early days of evangelical missions there were some signal cases of conversion. Men were won for Christ and they were trained to do work for their Lord. On such a scheme it was natural that the few European missionaries should be engaged in work of a purely educational character. Macdonald knew all this, and from the start he made it plain that he, as a minister of the Word, could not relinquish his life’s work, and so the department assigned to him was that of instruction in Scripture truth. This was the very work that he was most fitted to excel in, and so strictly did he adhere to his views of duty in this matter, that on the few occasions on which he took the place of a colleague who was laid aside for a time and gave instruction in the congenial field of Milton and Cowper. The works of the sweet bard of Olney were in keeping with the specifically Christian ends that he felt a Christian institution should aim at.

III
Life in Calcutta brought John Macdonald into contact and conflict not only with the ancient native heathenism of Bengal, but with the almost more repulsive heathenism of his countrymen, who were enlisted under the banner and engaged in the service of Mammon. Before Kipling’s day it was known that east of Suez the Ten Commandments were not held to bind, and Macdonald was of too fervid a spirit to hold his peace when he saw the whole city and land given to idolatry. He engaged in newspaper conflict with his ungodly country-men, and soon the initials J. M. D., over which he wrote, became a byword among the scoffers, but as surely as he incurred the reproach of the careless and the worldly, he won the devoted attachment of many good men in the city within and beyond his own Presbyterian community. Thus he became a kind of rallying point for godly evangelicals of every name and complexion. Some of these were Scots, some were English, some Swiss. Some of them were Church of England, some were of the other Reformed communions. They all felt that they had in Macdonald a man among men, one that was fearless in the defence of his Lord’s cause, and that shrunk not from the reproach of the Cross. His tracts on subjects affecting the intercourse of the Church and the world are among the most faithful productions of the Christian press such as, “Shall I go to the Ball?” “Shall I go to the Theatre?” They are worthy of being kept in print and circulation were it only to secure that the tone of the professing Church should be kept braced up. It is not to be wondered at that when in 1843 the Disruption took place at home, he and his worthy colleagues were clear as to the path of duty. Away on the banks of the Ganges, far from the scene of battle in Scotland, they were not subject to the purely local influences that might tell on folk who were on the spot, and the decisiveness of their action and the unanimity with which it was taken, are among the highest testimonials ever borne to the stand that was taken by our Disruption Fathers. The missionaries had to leave the mission premises and had virtually to begin to build again from the ground so far as equipment and promises were concerned. But they went on and prospered. Their work was not the only thing affected by the Disruption in Calcutta, St Andrew’s Church, being in fellowship with the Establishment in Scotland, was no longer their church, and as there was from the first a Free Church congregation to be ministered to, John Macdonald had again for some time the privilege and the pleasure of breaking the word of life to his brethren. It was their high privilege in turn to be his hearers, and thus a new field of extensive usefulness was opened up to him, and one that was very congenial to a man of his spirit.

IV
Thus he abounded in labours, although he was not robust, and lived in a trying climate. These labours told on his frame, and in 1847, at the age of forty, he was stricken by the hand of death. John Milne, then of St Leonard’s in Perth, who had been the fellow-worker of William Burns in the Perth Awakening of 1840, went out to Calcutta in the fifties to take charge of the Free Church congregation there. He loved to trace out the memory of John Macdonald, and in the Life of Milne, by Dr Horatius Bonar, there is recorded the story of how when Macdonald lay in a stupor, unconscious and nearing the end, some friends came to see him. Among them was Lacroix, the veteran Swiss evangelical missionary, who had spent devoted years in direct preaching to the Hindus. Looking at Macdonald as he lay, Lacroix said, “There lies the holiest man in India.” It was a tribute higher than which none could be paid, and it was fitting that the life of such a saint should be written to become part of the abiding heritage of the Church. This task was undertaken and carried through by his friend, Dr W. K. Tweedie of Edinburgh, and the biography, which saw two editions, gives a detailed account of the life of this sainted servant of Christ. There are few lives better fitted than those of Brainerd and Macdonald and Henry Martyn to set one on fire with that zeal which pre-eminent godliness calls forth in the heart and life of those that can value it. His venerable father survived John for about two years, and in his life by Dr Kennedy, the story is told of how he received the news of his son’s death.

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 Sketches of Ministers in Sutherland.
Rev. John Macdonald, A.M., Helmsdale, 1837-53

Author: George MacDonald, Lairg
Source: The Monthly Record of the Free Church of Scotland, 1918, pages 165 and 197

A very interesting biography of this godly and faithful minister, written by the late Rev. John Mackay, Lybster, was published in the year 1856; but it has been long out of print, and is now rare. This sketch, which is compiled from that biography, is but a small tribute to the memory of one who was a faithful witness for God in his native county of Sutherland; and a staunch and fearless upholder of the Free Church principles as founded upon the word of God.

I. His Early Years
Mr Macdonald was largely helpful in building up the Free Church in Sutherland during the decade from 1843-53, before being called home to his rest and reward on 24th November 1854. Born in the east end of the parish of Clyne or Brora on 24th July 1800, he was the son of godly parents by whom he was religiously trained from his infancy. To quote from his biographer, “Education for eternity begins at the fireside. He was known to cultivate the habit of secret prayer from his childhood, and cherished a fond predilection for the work of the ministry. He has recorded in his diary that the office of a bishop was the good work which he continued to desire during the years of his vanity. Tho’ he did not then know it, there were movements of the Spirit alluring him to the wilderness, and desires and aspirations after the service of his Heavenly Father’s house. He received his early education at the Parish School of Clyne, then taught by a very capable master, under whom he made good progress. On New Year’s Day, O.S., 1818, when engaged in playing at shinty, a stroke from his opponent’s club deprived him of the sight of his right eye. He had taken part in the game against his parents’ wishes, and felt this was a chastisement from his Heavenly Father for disregarding their commands.

In November 1821 he began his studies for the ministry at King’s College, Aberdeen. Dr Macpherson, who was a son of the parish minister of Golspie, was then Professor of Greek there; and Dr Tulloch (who was afterwards Principal) Professor of Mathematics. After being two sessions at college, Mr Macdonald was in November 1823 appointed parish schoolmaster of Farr on the north coast of Sutherland. He had been previously examined by the Presbytery of Tongue, and found duly qualified.

It was while in charge of this school that he passed through those profound soul-exercises which constitute the special inward training for the work of the ministry, and which prepared him for that work. He was taught Theology by the Master operating by His Spirit upon the faculties of his soul; and that before he had entered the Divinity Hall of King’s College, where he received the intellectual training necessary and complementary. Some of the Theological chairs were at that time occupied by men of the Moderate type. In this connection the following anecdote may be given. Principal Tulloch, when visiting his friends in Caithness, fell in with the famous Sandy Gair. He accosted Sandy, to whom he was a stranger, with the words, “Don’t you know me? I am the man who makes the ministers!” “Oh,” replied Sandy, “is that so? Their preaching will show that they are your workmanship.”

Near the Schoolhouse of Farr there is a huge rock with a cave called, in Gaelic, Creag-a-Bhodaich. Thither Mr Macdonald was in the habit of resorting for prayer. His soul-exercises drove him to the mercy-seat, where he wrestled with God. A godly man named Adam Bain, knowing the teacher’s habit of private devotion, remarked, “Ni Creag-a-Bhodaich bruidhean fathast,” i.e. Craig-a-Bhodaich will speak yet. He anticipated a favourable issue to Mr Macdonald’s case and a gracious answer to his prayers. His biographer compares his case to that of David in the 71st Psalm, 20th verse. The Lord showed him great and sore troubles, but he was afterwards enabled to sing the last clause of that verse: “Thou shalt quicken me again, and shalt bring me up again from the depths of the earth.” His ministerial life showed that this was amply realised. There were several godly persons in that district who took the deepest interest in the teacher’s case, and bore him upon their spirits at a throne of grace. Among these Adam Bain and a godly woman in Achina were noteworthy. They anticipated that his bonds would yet be loosed, and that he would preach the glorious Gospel with acceptance; an anticipation which was fully realised.

In November 1824 he resumed his studies at King’s College, having secured a suitable substitute to conduct the school in his absence; and in March 1826 finished the Arts course, obtaining his degree of A.M. He completed his studies at the Divinity Hall in 1830-31, and had his trial pieces prescribed in April of the latter year, but did not come forward for licence until November 1833. “In the summer of 1831, such were his fightings and fears that he told the Rev. David Mackenzie, Farr, that he considered himself on the brink of despair.” He was dismayed at the prospect of undertaking the work of the ministry, like Luther who, when urged by his friend Dr Staupitz to preach, replied, “No, no, it is no slight thing to speak before men in the place of God.” But when Staupitz persevered Luther said, “Ah, doctor, by doing this you deprive me of life. I shall not be able to hold out three months.” “Well! so be it in God’s name,” replied the other, “for our Lord God has need on high of devoted and skilful men.” It is no exaggeration to say, regarding John Macdonald, that he resembled Luther in fearless and unflinching maintenance of the truth combined with sound judgment and discrimination. His enthusiasm was tempered with discretion. He feared not the face of man and hesitated not to denounce wrongdoing in whatever form from the pulpit, clinching his words with Scripture. “He was mighty in the Scriptures.” In the Lord’s good time his bonds were loosed, and in November 1833 he was licensed to preach the Gospel by the Tongue Presbytery, by whom his trial discourses were sustained with approbation. One of these discourses on Matthew 5:20 is given in the biography, and it shows that he was a workman that needed not to be ashamed rightly dividing the word of truth.”

In April 1834 he received a letter from his relative, Dr Macdonald, Ferintosh, asking him to go to Canada where there was a wide field for preaching the Gospel to his Highland fellow-countrymen. After laying the matter before the Lord he came to the conclusion that it was not his duty to go. He did not find it to be the Master’s will that he should go to Canada. He believed that he had the mind of Christ in the word.
 

II. His Later Ministry

A few months after this he was asked as assistant to Rev. Mr Russell, minister of Gairloch. He went, and remained a few months in that parish but did not resign his school. While resident in Gairloch he was highly esteemed by the godly, as was stated in a letter from the late Rev. Mr Matheson in his biography.

After his return from Gairloch he took charge of his school until the summer of 1837, when he was invited to the missions of Achreny, Halsary and Halladale, on the borders of Sutherland and Caithness. He preached for a few Sabbaths in these places, but decided not to continue. The locality of his life-work had not yet been made manifest. Some of our ablest divines have been probationers for a few years, and gained much experience thereby. In June 1837 Mr Gunn, Factor for the Duke of Sutherland, wrote Rev. David MacKenzie, Farr, that the people of Helmsdale desired to have Mr Macdonald as their pastor. About a month thereafter Mr Macdonald proceeded to Helmsdale, and after preaching there a few Sabbaths, deemed it his duty to comply with the people’s wishes. He accordingly resigned his school and gave himself wholly and devotedly to pastoral work among them. From 1837 to 1843 he laboured as an unordained missionary, and having no seat in the Church Courts, took no prominent part in the Non-intrusion Controversy beyond preaching the Word and intimating plainly his perception of the Scriptural principles involved in that movement. As a faithful watchman upon the walls of Zion he took a deep and prayerful interest in those questions which agitated the Church at that crisis. He rested not until he had obtained at a throne of grace an unequivocal assurance that the outgoing ministers were right, and he was therefore prepared for the momentous step of separating from the Establishment. On the Sabbath before the Disruption his subject was that of Abraham offering up Isaac. He says in his Diary: “I read that Eli’s heart trembled for the Ark.” Such was the spirit in which he awaited the news of the Disruption. At the request of the Helmsdale congregation, and on the 13th July 1843, he was ordained as their pastor by the Free Presbytery of Dornoch in the green field above the ruins of the Castle – Rev. George Mackay, Clyne (afterwards Dr Mackay of Inverness), preached in Gaelic from John 21:15 to 17; and Rev. Angus Kennedy, Dornoch, in English from 2 Cor. 3:5 and 6. On the same evening a subscription was begun for building a Free Church at Helmsdale. In some villages in the county sites were obtained upon ground belonging to private persons, but in the country districts they were refused generally all over, and much hardship entailed for a time, until better counsels prevailed among the local authorities in Sutherland.

Mr Macdonald’s labours at Helmsdale were excessive in season and out of season. For upwards of sixteen years he had four complete services each Lord’s day – Gaelic from 11 o’clock a.m. to 1; English from 1.15 until past 3; Gaelic and English in the evenings from 5 to 8.30. This will be considered a very heavy day’s work nowadays. He also preached regularly on the Wednesday evenings; catechised his people once a year, and was attentive in visiting the sick and afflicted among them. “He was ready to assist his brethren in the ministry and to answer a call for help from whatever quarter.” “His services were much in request and most acceptable to the common people.” “Accustomed to be much in his closet and upon his knees, he seldom engaged in public duty without bringing out of the treasure of revealed truth things new and old.” “Frequently much and deeply exercised in soul and spirit and in searching the Scriptures there was much freshness in his public addresses.” The conversational tone and strain of his discourses contributed to secure and sustain the attention of his hearers. “His manner usually became impassioned only when there was cause for it, and then the strength and compass of his voice were altogether remarkable.” “On a Communion Sabbath at Lybster he addressed a congregation of three or four thousand in the open field, and the writer was credibly informed that some of his sentences were distinctly heard nearly a mile distant.”

With a characteristic anecdote and some further remarks this sketch may be brought to a close. One of the officials in Sutherland having been spoken to respecting the removal of a sand-bank which had accumulated in the mouth of the Helmsdale river, causing much hindrance to shipping, is reported to have said, “Go to your minister and ask him to pray for a spate to take it away. The official in question wished to save the Duke the heavy cost that would be incurred in the removal of said bank. This reply was reported to the minister. Not long after, on a day which was memorable among the people of the locality as the day of Brora market, when the rain came down in such torrents as if the windows of heaven had been opened, the sandbank was thoroughly swept out to sea. Mr Macdonald, when questioned by a friend respecting it, disclaimed any merit in its removal, but simply remarked: “When the Syrians said ”Jehovah is the God of the hills, but not of the valleys, He made it known that He was God.”

The ailment from which he suffered, and which terminated his course in the Church below, was a growth in the nostrils, called polypus, which latterly became cancerous. In October 1853, after consulting his friend, Dr Rutherford, Helmsdale, who declined to operate, he proceeded to Edinburgh, where Professor Syme operated very skilfully, and, as was for some time thought, quite successfully. Mr Macdonald recovered his health and spirits, and preached on several occasions, one of these being in Dr Moody Stuart‘s church. When engaged in public he entirely forgot that he was an invalid. About the middle of April 1854 his complaint re-appeared in a decidedly cancerous form. Professor Syme declined to operate a second time, and “this threw him into deep waters.” He proceeded to London, but it was of no avail, and afterwards consulted a specialist in Glasgow. He remained in Glasgow until on the 24th November 1854 he received the Master’s summons to the house of many mansions. It was evident to all his friends some weeks before his departure that he was fast ripening for glory. His remains were conveyed to Helmsdale for interment, and his funeral on the 1st December 1854 was attended by from 1200 to 1500 persons, while 200 scholars joined the procession on nearing the village. A granite monument has been erected to his memory by his attached people, and near by is another monument to the memory of his like-minded successor, Rev. Robert Finlayson, formerly of Lochs, Lewis.

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 Robert Macdonald

Author: Rev. Robert Cowan, Elgin
Source: Disruption Worthies: A Memorial of 1843, page 363

Robert MacDonald

Robert Macdonald was born at Perth on the 18th day of May 1813. His father was Alexander Macdonald, wine merchant, Perth, — a much respected gentleman in the community. His mother, Charlotte Macfarlane, was a native of Moulin, where her mother (who was the eldest daughter of Mr Dick, of Tullymet) had been brought to the Lord in the revival of 1798. Charlotte herself, also, although very young, received at that time abiding spiritual impressions, the good effect of which was felt by her whole family afterwards, so that Dr Macdonald, like Dr Duff, may be said to have been gained to the Church of Christ as one of the remoter fruits of that revival.

After receiving a good preliminary education at Perth Academy, Robert entered, at the age of fifteen, St Andrews University. His mind, however, had not yet been awakened to any serious interest, either literary or religious, and the first session at College yielded little result. Meanwhile, his eldest brother lay at home dying from the effects of an accident. He was a godly youth, of fine mental powers and rare promise. He died 22nd January 1830, in the full comfort of the Gospel; the last two verses of the eighth chapter of Romans being his firm anchor amid the great sea-billows. His father, who was then also ill, died nine months after. To Robert his brother’s death proved, as in the case of his friend McCheyne, the beginning of a new life. Returning to St Andrews, he now applied himself with much diligence and success to his literary studies, and completed the usual course there. He had at first had some thoughts of medicine as a profession, but, apart from other considerations tending to divert his mind from this, the one desire now was to serve God in the Gospel of His Son. He studied divinity at Edinburgh University under Chalmers and Welsh, attracting the special notice of Dr Chalmers, who, shortly after, in answer to a correspondent, wrote regarding him, “He was one of the ablest of my students.”

Mr Macdonald’s first sphere of ministerial service was at Logiealmond, in Perthshire. It was a field in which he had previously sown some good seed, having, while a student, usually spent the long summer vacation at his uncle’s house, Drummond Park, and having, during that period, commenced a Sabbath school, and held Sabbath evening meetings for the district. But in 1834 an old chapel at Chapelhill was restored. Mr Omond, now of Monzie Free Church, was its first incumbent, labouring there devotedly for two years. Mr Macdonald, who was licensed to preach by the Presbytery of Perth on 8th June 1836, succeeded him, and ministered at Logiealmond for nearly a year, not without a first-fruits of that harvest which was afterwards to crown his labours in the Gospel-field.

His first charge as an ordained minister, and that with which his name was long so happily associated, was Blairgowrie, in the Presbytery of Meigle, where his settlement took place on the 15th of June 1837. The patron, Mr Oliphant, of Gask, with a liberality not common in those days, had given the people a choice, and, till his lamented death in 1847, although not himself connected with the Free Church, he followed Mr Macdonald’s course with a gratified and sympathetic interest His first text after ordination was Acts 18:10, “I have much people in this city;” it was a fitting keynote for the ministry that day begun. Blairgowrie was even then a populous as well as an extensive parish. Stretching for eleven miles up the right bank of the Ericht, the town containing 2000 inhabitants, the country 1500 more, the population comprising both the manufacturing and the agricultural class, it was, even with the aid of a chapel, procured after Mr Macdonald came, and fostered by him, a laborious field for a spiritual husbandman to cultivate. But both as a pastor and as a preacher Mr Macdonald was soon seen to be making full proof of his ministry. From time immemorial the parish had had a seed of the righteous; but a special blessing came to it with the advent of the young pastor, so that the church of Blairgowrie began to be known as a centre of spiritual life and evangelistic work. Those times of refreshing also in which William Burns was a chosen instrument quickly followed, and Blairgowrie shared largely in the blessing. Robert McCheyne was a frequent visitor, and his Memoir indicates how close the bond of brotherhood between the two like-minded ministers was drawn. Indeed, McCheyne, Andrew Bonar (then of Collace), John Milne, of Perth, Robert Macdonald, and a few others of kindred spirit, were at that time in the heart of Scotland, in their evangelistic work and evangelical influence, “like a torch of fire in a sheaf.”

As a preacher, Mr Macdonald’s power as well as popularity was from the first very great. His natural gifts contributed much to this; the tall and graceful form, the animated and speaking countenance, and the singularly just and expressive elocution and action. Speaking of delivery alone, we have never thought it going beyond the mark to regard him as an almost faultless model of the pulpit orator; the combination of grace and energy, without languor and without vehemence, and the power to make everything spoken tell upon the hearers, being so well adjusted and complete. It is a token of the truth of this, that one discovers these things only on reflection; when listening to the Word as preached by him, the very efficiency of the candle-stick drew the eye to the light alone that shone from it. And the secret of the power lay much deeper. Besides that which is known only between a minister and God, few men have laboured so ungrudgingly, and few so judiciously, in the preparation of the message, as throughout life Dr Macdonald has done. His pulpit speech has always been the outcome of earnest study; his doctrine, pure gold of Gospel ore, rich and various as the mine from which it was drawn; all clearly stated and aptly illustrated, and all coming forth embathed in that unction and urged with that fervour which come from above and move men thither. One thing, moreover, which has strikingly characterised his preaching is, that, with abundance of impressiveness and awakening power, a certain brightness and cheerfulness always pervaded it, as if the preacher never forgot that the message with which he was charged was a message of “glad tidings.”

Apart from his preaching, his more private pastoral work at Blairgowrie was very fruitful, and has precious memories in many hearts. In addition to having much of the grace of Christian love, he was rarely gifted with an attractive natural courtesy of manner and bearing. No one who has known him will be surprised that he has been described, by one well entitled to speak on such a point, and not biassed by sympathy with his evangelical spirit, as a man of “most fascinating manners.” But the characteristic so referred to has often won him access where few could have found it; and, not only in his spheres of pastoral labour, but wherever he has sojourned, there have been delightful fruits of his private dealing and intercourse, some signal instances of which are already known.

Of all his Blairgowrie work, perhaps the most remarkable was that connected with his Sabbath school. It is almost hopeless to attempt to give a picture, such as would enable one who was not for a season in the midst of it, to realise the scene and the spirit that animated it. But his plan was this. He prepared his own lessons, which, besides taking up in order the Gospels and the Acts (the latter, as it happened, very seasonably, about Disruption time), included, as we remember, a course on the Shorter Catechism, and on the places mentioned in Scripture with their associations. The teachers met at half-past five each Sabbath evening, when he dictated to them the notes for the following Sabbath. The school met in the church at six, and, after opening it, he taught his young men’s class in the session-house till seven. Then he entered the church, by this time filled, and often crowded, with a congregation of six or seven hundred adults, besides the five hundred scholars. After a hymn sung, he catechised the classes from the pulpit for forty minutes on the lesson taught, interspersing anecdote, illustration, and appeal, concluding all with praise and prayer. This went uniformly on for the whole nineteen years of his Blairgowrie ministry. The labour implied, after the two stated services, was enormous; but the interest was extraordinary, and the blessing great and continuous. Many can trace their first ideas of a happy heaven to the teaching and hymn-singing, and the atmosphere altogether of that Sabbath school; and there are hundreds at this moment in all parts of the world, besides those that have fallen asleep, whose first impressions of religion, and first thoughts of wisdom’s ways as “ways of pleasantness,” date from Blairgowrie Sabbath School. The pastor had a rare aptitude for the work and rare ardour in it, and his spirit seemed to infect both teachers and scholars. His own words when leaving Blairgowrie shed light both on the process and the result:— “The happiest hours I have ever spent have been in my Sabbath school, and no part of my labours has been more abundantly blessed.”

Mr Macdonald took his full share in the work and witness-bearing of the latter half of the Ten Years’ Conflict. Besides work at home, he was one of the evangelists sent to Aberdeenshire in the years preceding the Disruption. In one of these expeditions he followed McCheyne in his last preaching tour, with many tokens of blessing on his labours. One interesting case was that of a husband and wife, the one of whom was converted through Mr McCheyne’s preaching, the other through Mr Macdonald’s. He had much to do in his own presbytery, in which Mr White of Airlie and he were the only ministers who came out; and it was chiefly owing to his influence that the Free Church mustered so strong throughout the bounds of that Presbytery. In his own parish the great body of the people accompanied him into the Free Church. The parish church had been seated for less than 800; the Free Church was built to accommodate 1100, and even with that accommodation the sitters were soon cramped for room.

It is unnecessary to enter here into the details of his great School-Building Scheme, that having been effectively done in the “Annals of the Disruption” (Annals, 2, 108). The conception of the scheme revealed a financial genius which took most people by surprise, [17] and its execution illustrated one of his own favourite quotations, “Prayer and pains, with faith in God, can accomplish anything.” One thing was highly characteristic, namely, the manner in which the spirit of the evangelist dominated in him that of the financier. Wherever, throughout the land, he advocated his scheme, he first preached the Gospel to the people; and those preachings are still remembered and referred to with lively zest and gratitude. Perhaps, because overshadowed by the greatness of this enterprise, his service in connection with the building of the New College, Edinburgh, has been partly lost sight of. All the circumstances cannot be made known during the life-time of some of the contributors. It is, however, simply matter of fact, that it is chiefly to Dr Macdonald the Church is indebted for the prosperous inauguration of that work, and the procuring of the necessary funds for carrying it out (Annals, 2, 123).

Owing to these excessive labours his health in some degree suffered for several years, and, in 1852, he went abroad for a year, visiting the Mediterranean, and making a prolonged tour in the Holy Land,—the fruit of which, although not formally given to the world, was yet exceedingly enriching to his own mind, and added an enriching element to his ministrations in subsequent years. Dr Macdonald was translated to North Leith in 1857. It was not without reluctance that he could contemplate leaving a sphere where, as he said, “the Lord Himself had from the beginning graciously smiled on his labours, and given him seals of his ministry, many dear spiritual children, some of whom were now in heaven, and others still living adorning their Christian profession.” And it was a sore wrench to his people, numbering at this time 1100 communicants, and who, as one of their commissioners expressed it, “could not think of a Blairgowrie without a Macdonald.” But considerations of health constrained him to accept the measure of relief which change of sphere was fitted to afford. He accepted the call on 14th January, 1857, and on 15th March, began his ministry at North Leith, preaching from the text, Romans 15:29-32: “And I am sure that, when I come unto you, I will come in the fulness of the blessing of the Gospel of Christ,” &c. The manner in which the Lord has verified that confidence of His servant, in the experience of the congregation of North Leith, is matter not only of past but of still current history. Some of his first sermons at Leith are known to have been blessed to the conversion of souls. The Lord’s own people have been built up and comforted; and more than one season of special refreshing has been enjoyed. The outward prosperity has also been great. During the first years of his ministry, a beautiful and commodious new church was built, at a cost (including halls and offices) of £9000; the communion roll speedily rose from 450 to its present point of 1100; whilst the Christian liberality has increased proportionally.

His degree of D.D. was conferred on him, in the most spontaneous and complimentary manner, by his own University of St. Andrews, in 1870.

In 1879, Mr T. Crerar, M.A., minister at Cardross, was settled as colleague to Dr Macdonald in the pastorate of North Leith, an arrangement which has added greatly to his comfort, and is full of promise for the congregation.

Dr Macdonald has lately become very favourably known as an author. Some of his former writings—and in particular his “Lessons for the Present from the Records of the Past,” a practical and experimental treatise on Genesis, published in 1850—have been much prized by many. But the work by which—of all as yet given by him to the Church—he will be best known, is the volume of daily readings, entitled “From Day to Day,” published in 1879. This volume has, in little more than a year, reached its fifth thousand, and will long hold its place as probably the best book of the kind yet written. In clearness, point, and grace of style, in evangelical savour, in abundance and aptness of illustration, and in home-coming persuasiveness and force, it would be difficult to find a rival to it. In these respects also, it is a good example of what the author’s preaching, in its more practical parts, has always been.

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 Patrick McFarlan, D.D.

Author: Rev. William Laughton, Greenock
Source: Disruption Worthies: A Memorial of 1843, page 371

Patrick McFarlan

The subject of this notice was born in the Canongate of Edinburgh, of which parish his father was minister, in the year 1781. Whilst yet a child he lost his father; but he was brought up under the care of a godly mother, from whom he received those early impressions which prove most deep and lasting. Almost from boyhood, his thoughts were turned to the ministry. Having frequent intercourse, as he grew up, with such eminent ministers of the day as Dr John Erskine, Sir Henry Moncreiff, and Dr Buchanan, his father’s successor, he did not fail to profit by their example and advice. He entered the Hall as a student of divinity in 1798, and was licensed to preach the gospel, by the Presbytery of Edinburgh, in 1803. It was about this time he received further and clearer impressions of divine truth, by the perusal of Wilberforce’s “Practical View of Christianity,” the book which some years after exerted such a powerful influence on Dr Chalmers. In 1806, Mr McFarlan was ordained minister of the parish of Kippen, in the Presbytery of Dunblane; here he remained till 1810, when he was translated to the parish of Polmont, near Linlithgow. He continued there for fourteen years, during which he devoted himself to pastoral duties with great earnestness and fidelity, and with no common measure of success; proving himself a good minister of Jesus Christ, both in the pulpit and in private visitation. It was at this time, too, that he acquired that experience in ecclesiastical affairs, and that knowledge of the forms of Church Courts, which afterwards proved of so much service. The high position he now occupied in the estimation of the Church, was shewn by his appointment in 1824 as successor to Dr Chalmers in St John’s parish, Glasgow. It was an arduous undertaking indeed, to carry on the work of his illustrious predecessor both in the congregation and the parish; but he applied himself to it with his usual earnestness and energy. After two years, however, finding it too heavy a burden, he removed to St Enoch’s parish, where he ministered for several years to a large and influential congregation. In 1832, he was translated to the west parish of Greenock, and in that town he continued his ministerial labours for seventeen years, till his death.

Dr McFarlan had always taken an active part in Church affairs, and in such questions as interested the Christian community. For public debate and controversial discussion, he had special qualifications. In the Assembly of 1825 he distinguished himself, in connection with the debate on Pluralities; and in the Apocrypha controversy, his pen was employed with characteristic clearness and decision. The influence he had attained and the confidence reposed in him by his brethren, were evidenced in the most unequivocal manner, when he was made Moderator of the General Assembly of 1834. At that Assembly the Veto Act was passed, and the conflict was begun, which ended in the Disruption. In that great struggle no man took a more decided and honourable part than Dr McFarlan. He was indeed, in the strictest sense, a non-intrusionist; always refusing to take up anti-patronage ground; believing that the operation of the Veto Law, would effectually protect the Church, from those abuses which had done it such injury in time past. But he was quick to perceive the vital nature of the question, raised by the judgment of the civil courts in the Auchterarder case; as regarded the Church’s spiritual independence he would admit of no compromise; he took up a decided position from the outset, and maintained it with unwavering consistency to the end.

At a public meeting in Greenock, in December 1839, having set forth with great clearness the position in which the Church was placed, he concluded as follows:—

“It has pleased God in His providence to fill me, as far as stipend is concerned, a fuller cup than has fallen to many of my brethren; but this I say, and say it advisedly, so help me God—holding the views I entertain of this subject, and regarding it as impossible, without a sacrifice of conscience, to submit to and acquiesce in that decree to which I have referred, I would rather cast that cup to the ground than I would taste it again, embittered, as it would be if I were to yield, by the consciousness of having deserted what I believe to be my duty to God, and my duty to the Church.”

In the Assemblies of 1840 and 1841 Dr McFarlan took a leading part, especially in the discussion on Lord Aberdeen’s Bill, and in the various proceedings connected with the case of the Strathbogie ministers. At the August Commission of 1841, when the leaders of the Moderate party had openly taken part with the deposed ministers, and were manifestly bent on bringing matters to a crisis, he made a most impressive speech, at the close of which he called on his brethren to stand fast to their principles, in the following terms:—

That he should have exerted much influence in the counsels of the Church at such a crisis, was not surprising, considering his great experience in ecclesiastical affairs, his soundness of judgment, and skill in debate. But besides this, when the issue of the struggle began to be foreseen, and the sacrifices it would entail on those who adhered to their principles, Dr McFarlan’s position and the attitude he maintained attracted special attention, on the part both of friends and opponents, for the simple reason, that the west parish of Greenock was, at that time, the richest living in the Church of Scotland. Would a minister deliberateiy give up such emoluments for the sake of principle? Amongst worldly men there were few that believed it. Dr McFarlan indeed had declared, in the most explicit manner, that he was prepared to do so. But by too many this was regarded as no better than an empty threat; and the expectation that he would draw back found frequent expression. Those who thought so little knew the man—the integrity of his character, the depth of his convictions, and the steadfastness of his purpose. It is scarcely necessary to add, that when the time came he nobly redeemed his pledge. Nothing became him better—the strength and dignity of his Christian character—than the way in which he accepted the change of circumstances which the Disruption involved. In his case the change was a very material one, such as a man of his tastes and habits, of his liberal disposition and large hospitality, could not possibly be insensible to. But no one ever heard a complaint from him; he had the same cheerful, happy demeanour as before: his was the unbroken serenity of a good conscience.

After the Disruption, Dr McFarlan continued for more than six years to minister to a numerous and attached congregation. In the Free Church at large, he held a prominent place, and exerted very great influence. His noble testimony, his long experience and mature wisdom, secured for him no ordinary measure of respect and attention. He was called to the Moderator’s chair in the Assembly of 1845, presiding both at its ordinary meeting in May, and its special meeting at Inverness in August. His sympathies were by no means confined to the limits of his own communion: he was one of the original promoters of the Evangelical Alliance, and he took a special interest in the Continental Churches, and the revival amongst them of evangelical religion. His death took place at Greenock, after a short but severe illness, in November 1849, in the sixty-ninth year of his age. He retained his mental faculties to the last, giving frequent expression to his faith and hope as a Christian, with singular distinctness and solemnity. It deserves to be noticed that he was the fourth in a succession of ministers, continued from father to son, since the time of the Revolution. In the ministry of the Free Church, he has been worthily succeeded by his son, the Rev. John McFarlan of the Free Middle Church, Greenock, and his grandson, the Rev. Andrew Melville of Free St Enoch’s, Glasgow.

Dr McFarlan’s personal appearance was very prepossessing. His head and face would have attracted observation in any assembly— suggesting the idea of culture and refinement, of mental acuteness and moral elevation. His voice was clear and ringing, rather than strong. His speaking, both from the pulpit and in debate, was characterised above everything by clearness and precision. He was wanting in the power of illustration; but there was an admirable distinctness which went far to make up for the defect; he always knew what he meant to say and made it perfectly plain to his hearers. He was distinguished, too, in a remarkable degree, by business talents; in this respect his acquaintance with forms, his tact, his readiness of word and pen, were of invaluable service to his brethren. Indeed, one of his most characteristic features was facility of execution: what he had to do, he could do at once, without hesitation or delay, an important quality for one so much engaged in public affairs. In the pulpit, that defect in the illustrative faculty just referred to, was, no doubt, a serious drawback. The want of imagination necessarily interfered with any widespread popularity beyond the sphere of his own congregation. But, on the other hand, his clear exhibition of gospel truth, set forth with simplicity and earnestness, made his preaching most weighty and acceptable among the people of his charge. It was the old gospel, known and realised in his own experience, which he preached to others with fulness and fidelity. In the more private duties of the pastoral office he was unwearied; having a strong hold on the affections of his people by his sympathy with them in times of difficulty and trial; while the cheerful affability of his manner was attractive alike to young and old. Indeed, in him the Christian minister and the Christian gentleman were most happily blended: he was a gentleman of the old school, always courteous, with that ease and self-possession, which tended to relieve others from any feeling of restraint or embarassment. He shone in company by his conversational powers; but however lively and entertaining, he never forgot what was due to his office, nor allowed others to forget it. There was an unfailing dignity and propriety in his demeanour, which added greatly to his weight and influence. He was a man with much warmth of heart and feeling: in his family, overflowing with affection, and the object of affection in a corresponding degree; while to others on intimate terms with him, he was the most steadfast of friends and the most delightful of companions. Those who remember how, in early life, they were admitted to his society and enjoyed his confidence, and the encouragement thereby afforded them at the outset of their ministry, can never cease to cherish his memory, as of one of their best and dearest friends. By the Free Church at large, the name of Dr Patrick McFarlan is to be remembered, as occupying a prominent place in the list of Disruption Worthies, on account of the noble part he acted at that memorable crisis. As one of the fathers and founders of the Free Church of Scotland, his name will ever be associated with her history.

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 George Mackay, D.D.

Author: Rev. Alexander Mackenzie, Edinburgh
Source: Disruption Worthies: A Memorial of 1843, page 511

George Mackay

If varied and severe trials and heavy losses after the time of the Disruption, if self-denying and eminent services in defending and extending the principles of the Disruption, if long and laborious and highly successful work as a minister of the Gospel, and great influence ever employed on the side of truth and righteousness, entitle one to a place in our Disruption Worthies, that place is justly due to the subject of this sketch.

Dr George Mackay was born in the Parish of Reay, in the County of Caithness, in the year 1796. His parents occupied a highly respectable position in the district, and were distinguished for a quiet and consistent Christian life. At that period, it was far more an object of desire with Christian parents than it seems to be now, that, if it were the will of God to give them a son, with the spirit of a Samuel, or a Timothy, they would account it their highest privilege, to devote him to the Lord in the service of the Gospel. The privilege of such a son, consecrated by the grace of the Holy Ghost, and by the fervent prayers of a pious parentage, was regarded by them as far more evidential of the favour of their God to them, than were they to have many sons and daughters born and reared to elevated worldly positions. There can be no doubt that it was in this light of a gift from God, to be reared for Him and devoted to His service, that this boy, born in that home in the Parish of Reay, was regarded by his parents. He enjoyed the best educational advantages which the place could furnish. The parish schools at that time were generally taught by the alumni of our Universities, so that, a boy of excellent natural abilities, as this boy was, had the opportunity of learning all those branches of knowledge which fitted him for entering college. When the time came, Dr Mackay entered the University of King’s College, Aberdeen, which was then the university generally attended by students from the north of Scotland. When there, he occupied a high position in his classes, and was much respected by his fellow-students. During his university career he was appointed to the parish school of Loth, in the county of Sutherland, and this appointment he held till he was licensed to preach the Gospel, in the year 1827. It was while parochial teacher, that he attended the Divinity Hall at Aberdeen, being enabled to do this, in accordance with the then existing practice, by appointing a suitable substitute during the three months of the college session. The experience of parish-school work, was a training of great value to those who were looking forward to the ministry of the Gospel. It familiarised them with parochial work. It brought them into profitable acquaintanceship with families, and furnished them with many opportunities of learning how to deal wisely with young and old. When the student of Divinity was regarded as one influenced by a true spirit in looking forward to the ministry, he was an object of special interest to the well-known Christian people of the district; he was admitted into their fellowship, had a warm place in their prayers, and was greatly benefited by their counsel and experience. From his position in the parish, he had admission, too, into the best society there; and often, in a judicious intercourse with the members of that society at so important a period of life, had corners and points of manner rubbed off; and all this was fitted, by the Divine blessing, not only to make him a well-equipped Christian minister, but, what should not be overlooked by those who occupy that position, to make him an attractive Christian gentleman.

During Dr Mackay’s attendance at the university, he had Principal Pirie, of the University of Aberdeen, and Principal Brown, of the Free Church College there, as his fellow-students. The acquaintanceship then formed between him and these distinguished individuals, has since been maintained. The writer of this notice has once and again heard both Dr Mackay and Principal Brown going over, with no little enjoyment, their varied reminiscences of college days.

After completing his course at the Divinity Hall, Dr Mackay was licensed to preach the Gospel by the Presbytery of Dornoch, and preached his first sermon at Kildonan, and second at Clyne. Shortly after being licensed, he was appointed assistant to the well-known and much esteemed Dr Angus Mackintosh of Tain. This assistantship, from its many advantages, was a source of signal blessing to him at the beginning of his ministerial life. Short as it was, he learned, under the superintendence of so profound a divine, and so eminent a preacher as Dr Mackintosh, and from the fellowship of the many remarkable Christians for whom the congregation of Tain was then distinguished, lessons which were of great benefit to him during his future ministry. He had been scarcely a year assistant in Tain, when he received, in the year 1828, a presentation to the parish of Clyne, in the Presbytery of Dornoch. This was not the first presentation which was in his offer; but these, for reasons which manifested Dr Mackay’s disinterestedness, he respectfully declined. This presentation to Clyne was followed by a unanimous call, so that after the usual preliminary steps were taken, he was duly settled minister of that important parish, with every prospect of great usefulness and success.

The religious and ecclesiastical condition which existed in many sections of the Highlands previous to the Disruption, was somewhat singular. While some of the pulpits of a Presbytery were filled by evangelical ministers, others were occupied by ministers who belonged to what was then called the Moderate party in the Church of Scotland; whose ministrations and practice were not always such as to commend them to their flocks. It was a striking fact, that at that time the power of the Gospel was more influential among the people generally, than among the ministers; and the truth of this was made patent at the Disruption, in the fact that, while so many ministers remained in the Established Church, almost all the people left it; even in those parishes in which they were not headed by the pastor. Owing to this mixed character of the ministry of a Presbytery, the settlement of a Gospel minister over a congregation, was a matter of great importance not only to the parish more immediately concerned, but to the neighbouring parishes, which may not have been so favourably situated. The church of that parish became then a centre of life and blessing not only to its own people, but to the people of the surrounding districts, who were hungering for the bread of life for their souls; and, not being supplied with it from the pulpits of their respective parishes, were wont every Sabbath to travel longer or shorter distances, as the case required, to wait on that ministry in which they found that spiritual nutriment they needed, and sought, but could not find at home. This was the condition of the Presbytery of Dornoch, of which Dr Mackay now became a member, and continued to be its condition on to the period of the Disruption.

The state of this Presbytery at the Disruption, as furnished by the late Mr. McCosh, of the Dundee Warder, in his “Wheat and the Chaff,” was as follows:—Six of its ministers joined the Free Church—viz., Rev. Duncan MacGillivray, Lairg; Angus Kennedy, Dornoch; Charles Gordon, Assynt: George Mackay, Clyne; Patrick Davidson, Stoer; and George Kennedy, assistant and successor, Dornoch. Five continued to adhere to the Establishment—viz., Rev. Murdo Cameron, Creich; Donald Ross, Loth; Alexander Macpherson, Golspie; John McKenzie, Rogart; and James Campbell, Kildonan. Of Mr. Campell, Mr. McCosh says, “that he maintained the privileges of non-intrusion and spiritual independence, and generally supported the evangelical cause. He was a member of convocation, and adhered to the first series of resolutions.” It is evident from this representation of the ecclesiastical condition of the Presbytery of Dornoch that, the Parish of Clyne was a centre of Gospel light to the parishes about it, which were not so favourably settled; so that one needs not wonder that its Sabbath ministrations were attended, not only by the inhabitants of Clyne, but by many from the surrounding parishes. The work of the Lord continued to be carried on with vigour and no little success by the minister. His services as a preacher were highly valued over the North of Scotland, and he was therefore constantly and widely engaged at sacramental seasons.

After a time, however, the important ecclesiastical questions which were agitating the Church of Scotland became the concern of every parish and congregation. The truths involved in these questions bore so manifestly on the glory of the Great Head of the Church, and the rights of the Christian people, as well as on the Scriptural regulation of the affairs of Christ’s Church, that ministers and congregations had to decide what their position was to be in relation to them. That result, without any hesitation, was arrived at by Dr Mackay and his flock. They cast in their lot with what is known as the Non-Intrusion party in the Church of Scotland. Dr Mackay was present at the Convocation which was held in Edinburgh, in November 1842, and appended his name to the Resolutions which were then drawn up. A serious accident having befallen him, by which he received a compound fracture of his left arm, he was prevented from attending the memorable Assembly of 1843. Laid up in his comfortable manse, his Lord had in an unlooked-for way furnished him with a time of leisure, for a fuller and more careful consideration of that step to which his signature to the Convocation Resolutions bound him, the surrender which it demanded of him, and the almost overwhelming trials and difficulties of that new state which he himself and his people must face, should his severance from the Established Church be consummated. This renewed consideration of the principles at stake, in the controversy which was then agitating the Church in its conflict with the State, amidst circumstances so painful and harassing, only brought out into clearer manifestation to him the Scriptural character of these principles, and made him more resolved to adhere through grace to them, however costly that adherence might prove. He could say, as another in somewhat different circumstances said, “Jesus, I do this for Thee.”

The following letter furnishes the best evidence of Dr Mackay’s determination, and trying position. It is addressed to the late Mr. Patrick Tennent of Edinburgh, that it might be communicated to the Committee in Edinburgh then charged with the procuring of sites and the erection of places of worship, where these were required.

“Manse of Clyne, 27th May, 1843.

“My Dear Sir,—I beg leave to request of you, as a member of Assembly, to intimate my adherence to the protest given in by my brethren, and my readiness, by the grace of God, to share in the consequences. My serious accident, and the present state of my health, rendered it utterly impossible for me to be in Edinburgh on the present momentous occasion.

“I enclose a copy of a deed which I have in my hands, of a lot of land in the village of Brora, which I earnestly request you to lay before the Provisional Committee. It is of the very utmost importance that the matter be attended to without one moment’s delay; otherwise the chance will be that the property will be bought up, and that the only site which can be got on any terms, so far as I can learn, will be taken from us.

“This station is surrounded by three parishes, where there are three Moderate ministers—and I am not aware that a single piece of ground can be got in any of them for erecting a place of worship, unless in the village of Helmsdale. From Brora there is access to any of them, even on a Sabbath morning, and the people adhering to the Free Church could attend in this parish as they often do—even should they not have the ordinances of religion administered regularly among themselves. …

“Let me urge upon you the absolute necessity of attending punctually with this document. Everything here depends upon whether or not we can procure the site; for I can scarcely move the people on till they see before them the prospect of a place of worship; and you have no conception of the efforts that are being made to keep them back from joining us, and the extraordinary influence those in authority have over them. …

“I am, my dear sir, yours sincerely, George Mackay.”

“Patrick Tennent, Esq.,
9 Lynedoch Place, Edinburgh.”

This communication affords a glimpse of the opposition and difficulties, which many ministers and congregations had to contend with, in their maintenance of Disruption principles. In the case of Clyne the influence of the noble house of Sutherland, wielded by some of those who were intrusted with the management of the estates, was opposed to the Free Church movement of 1843. One of the forms which this opposition assumed was the refusal of sites for places of worship; and this refusal, in some cases, extended over a period of years, as if worldly power would, by such a course of action, so weary out the patience of those, who, for conscientious convictions, were compelled to leave the Establishment, as to induce them to return to it. Intelligent conviction in this case, however, proved stronger than arbitrary power, so that after a time sites were granted, for the days were gone for ever, when a tenantry were ready to make the will of the proprietor the rule of their action within the domain of conscience.

At this time the minister of Clyne had to deal with all the difficulties attendant on site refusal, and had therefore to look about, and accept of any spot on which to erect a place of worship, though it might be clogged with somewhat unfavourable conditions. The site referred to in the letter of 27th May was obtained; but the difficulties of Dr Mackay, so far as the erection of a church was concerned, did not end there, for all the quarries of the district were interdicted to the people of the Free Church. In the circumstances, application was again made to Edinburgh, when the Committee charged with the erection of churches sent down workmen who were familiar with the erection of buildings of concrete, to set up a place of worship of that description for the congregation, the material of which had to be obtained from the sea-shore, and within flood mark. Even then the inconveniences and hardships of the people were not terminated, for the worshippers were now and again exposed to the drippings of tar from the felt with which the building had to be roofed. Still, with all these discomforts, the people were thankful to have this humble place of meeting, while the preaching of the Gospel by their beloved pastor was never more precious and successful.

Shortly after its erection, the Church had to be utilised for another purpose. The parish teacher, having joined the Free Church, had to quit the School-house. There was as complete an exodus of the children from the Established School, as of the people from the Established Church. The School had therefore to be carried on. Having been driven from the temporary premises, which it was thought the children could lawfully occupy, they were under the necessity of going to the Church. The first winter, during which the work of the School was carried on in the Church, was one of unusual severity. It was no easy matter to prevent the children from suffering from the cold, as the building was not constructed with arrangements for heating. The usual heating apparatus at that time in many of the Churches of the Highlands, was a church well filled, and in this case crowded, with a congregation whose hearts were warmed with the vigorous preaching of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Means, however, had to be adopted to heat the building for the children, and this was done by the introduction of a number of kitchen pots filled with burning coals, so that the smoke, for which no mode of egress had been provided, had to be endured by the pupils if they were to enjoy the benefit of warmth. One can easily understand that, from such an arrangement as this, the comforts of the building as a place of worship on Sabbath, were by no means increased. Still, there was no grumbling on the part of the worshippers, for these were times in the history of the Free Church, when the people were willing and prepared to endure not a little discomfort.

Now, that the congregation of Clyne was supplied with this humble place of meeting for the worship of God, the next concern of the minister was to procure some home, in which he himself and wife and family could be sheltered. Great eagerness was manifested by the members of the Presbytery of Dornoch who remained in connection with the Establishment, to compel those who, for conscience’ sake, had felt it to be their duty to resign all connection with it, to quit their manses as well as churches with the least possible delay. Some days after the close of the Assembly of 1843, the following circulars were addressed to Dr Mackay:—

“Golspie, 7 th June, 1843.

“Rev. Sir,—By authority of an Act of the General Assembly, dated at Edinburgh, the 29th day of May last, I hereby enjoin you to attend a meeting of the Presbytery of Dornoch, at Golspie, on Monday first, being the 12th current.

“You must be aware that in the present state of the Church, your compliance with this injunction is absolutely necessary, involving as it does, civil and ecclesiastical consequences.—I am, rev. sir, your obedt. humble servt.,

A. MACPHERSON, Moderator.

“The Rev. George Mackay,
Minister of the Parish of Clyne.”

“Golspie, 12th June, 1843.

“Rev. Sir,—By authority of an Act of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland, dated at Edinburgh, the 29th day of May last, I, as Moderator of the Presbytery of Dornoch, understanding that you have given in your adherence to the Protest laid on the table of the Assembly by the seceding ministers, on Thursday, the 18th day last, do hereby require your compearance at a meeting of the Presbytery of Dornoch, to be held here, on Tuesday, the 27th day of June current, for the purpose of ascertaining whether you have done so or not. And I further, under authority of said Act, now intimate that, in the event of your non-compearance, the Presbytery are authorised to find and declare that you are no longer a minister of the Church.—I am, rev. sir, your most obedt. Servant,

A. MACPHERSON, Moderator.

“The Rev. George Mackay,
Clyne.”

It is unnecessary to add, that these summonses were unheeded. It was considered the most dignified course to follow, to allow the Established Church Presbytery of Dornoch to do all that, in the circumstances, they were legally entitled to do.

Having had to quit the manse, there was no possibility of procuring a comfortable dwelling. The only house that could be got was a small cottage in the village of Brora, upon which many alterations had to be made, in order to make it at all habitable; and even then the accommodation was very limited and uncomfortable. There is no doubt that the hardships to which Mrs. Mackay was exposed, considering her past position and comforts, brought on her the troubles which eventually issued in her death, about two years afterwards.

There were severe trials, too, to which Dr Mackay was exposed, from the coldness and opposition which he and his family experienced at the hands of relatives, who occupied high and influential positions in the county of Sutherland; and though these trials were subsequently, in the good providence of God, removed, at the time they were painful to bear. The favour of near and dear friends had to be surrendered then, and was surrendered by the minister and his partner without a murmur, in the maintenance of their faithful allegiance to the Crown rights of our Redeemer. This was part of the cross which they had then to bear for Jesus, and they bore it most willingly and patiently.

When the minister of Clyne was thus busily occupied in providing for the shelter of his own flock and family, he was also zealously engaged in looking after the interests of the different congregations within the bounds of the Presbytery, whose ministers adhered to the Establishment. This was no easy matter, considering the wide extent of the Presbytery—some of its parishes being seventy miles distant from Clyne. It was, however, a time when, if much work had to be done for Christ, His servants had a mind to work, and their Master largely helped them with strength for it, and success in it. The very enemies of the Free Church could not but acknowledge that her Living Head was with her; and His presence imparted both confidence and zeal to ministers and people, in prosecuting the work which was laid to their hands to accomplish. The language of Nehemiah may with truth be applied to the success of the work in which the Free Church was then engaged. “And it came to pass, that when all our enemies heard thereof (that the building of Jerusalem’s wall was finished), and all the heathen that were about us saw these things, they were much cast down in their own eyes, for they perceived that this work was wrought of our God” (Nehemiah vi. 16). In the vigorous prosecution of the work here indicated, Dr. Mackay was occupied during the remainder of his stay in Clyne.

Towards the end of 1844, a vacancy was created in the Free North Church of Inverness, by the translation of the late Reverend Archibald Cook to the congregation of Daviot, within the bounds of the Presbytery of Inverness. The attention of the North Church Congregation was at once directed to Dr. Mackay, as the person to succeed their former excellent minister. They were well assured of his suitableness for such a place, not only from the testimony universally borne by others to his pulpit abilities, but from their own experience of his ministrations, he having some time before assisted Mr. Cook at a communion season. The usual steps were at once adopted to give a call to Dr Mackay. That call, unanimous in its nature, and signed by 1235 persons, was laid before the Presbytery of Dornoch; but some delay was occasioned by the refusal of the Presbytery to sanction the translation, though Dr Mackay himself had expressed his willingness to accept it. It was therefore necessary for the Presbytery of Inverness and the North Church congregation to appeal to the Free Synod of Sutherland and Caithness against their decision, and that Reverend Court having sustained the appeal, and agreed to the translation, Dr Mackay was inducted to his charge in the month of June, 1845. A few weeks after his settlement there, his much-esteemed partner, who cheerfully shared with him the trials of the Disruption, and greatly sustained him under them, died. The great loss which this bereavement was to the minister of the North Church, and the pain and sorrow of heart which it produced, left as he was with a young family of four children, it is not for us to describe; we will leave over this great affliction, so soon after his translation, the cover of secrecy.

Some time after, he married again, Catherine, daughter of the well-known Rev. Thomas Fraser, one of the ministers of Inverness, who has proved to him a most valuable and devoted helpmeet.

In the year 1853, a call was addressed to Dr Mackay from Duke Street Gaelic Church, Glasgow, signed by 611 members and adherents. A counter memorial was presented to the Presbytery of Inverness, from the Free North congregation, signed by 1396 members and adherents, praying the Presbytery to refuse to loose their minister from his present charge. Dr Mackay having expressed a preference to remain with his congregation, the Presbytery refused to translate him. Against this finding, the commissioners from Glasgow appealed to the General Assembly, but the decision of the Presbytery was confirmed by that venerable Court.

In Inverness, the sphere of Dr Mackay’s labours was of a more public nature, than when he resided in Clyne; and he soon made his mark on the town and district. Though the congregation of the North Church was in the days of Mr Cook a large one, under the ministrations of Dr Mackay it continued to grow, till now it is the largest in the north of Scotland—numbering between Gaelic and English, upwards of two thousand hearers. Dr Mackay, on his translation to Inverness, became better known, and at once took a first place among the ministers of the Highlands; and that place he has not only maintained during a long ministry, but has so extended and established, that now there is no name so familiar to all the people, or person whose character is more respected, or whose influence is more powerful; he is equally esteemed by young and old, and by rich and poor.

It is only what might be expected from his character and pulpit power, that his services should be held in great esteem at communion seasons in all parts of the country. This work adds greatly to the labours of a popular minister, but it largely widens the field of his usefulness.

In the year 1878, his Alma Mater at Aberdeen conferred on him, unsolicited, the degree of Doctor of Divinity.

This is not the time to describe the characteristics of Dr Mackay’s ministry. It is enough to say that, did it not possess striking excellences, he would not have the place he occupies as a minister—a place rising with growing age and experience.

As a citizen, he makes his influence felt in everything which conduces to the best interests of that community, in the midst of which he has lived for now nearly forty years; while he is a fearless denouncer and opponent of what he considers prejudicial to its welfare.

As a churchman, he takes the place which he has a right to take from character, abilities, and age. His views on church questions have great weight with those who generally associate with him in ecclesiastical matters. His opponents too greatly respect his convictions, knowing that they are convictions which are not hastily arrived at, but the beliefs of a mind which is willing and ready to receive any additional light which may be furnished from whatever quarter. In the questions which have of late years agitated the Church, Dr Mackay has taken what may be called the Conservative side. He does not believe that all which now-a-days is called progress, is for the real advancement of the cause of Christ. Neither does he adhere to what has been the practice of the Church, merely because it is long established, as if what is true and right was to be judged by mere age. The side he takes on these questions, he does with the thorough conviction, that he is pursuing the constitutional course, and doing what he considers to be the best for the maintenance of the purity, peace, and prosperity of the Church.

Dr Mackay is now in the eighty-seventh year of his age. He passed the jubilee of his ministry about five years ago, when he was presented with a splendid money testimonial contributed by friends from all quarters and of different denominations. On that occasion, special services were conducted on the last Sabbath of September, in the North Church, by his old and much esteemed friend, Dr Kennedy of Dingwall. In the afternoon service of that day, Dr. Kennedy said: “Surely he is called to lift up his Ebenezer, looking back to fifty years of a ministry, throughout which the Lord kept his strength from failing, his feet from falling, his name from reproach, and his services from a slight. And if he is called on such an occasion to acknowledge that the Lord hath helped him, you also are called to acknowledge what you owe for the gift of such a pastor. You have had him for thirty-three years preaching the Word of Life and going in and out among you. Had you had one who cared not for your souls, or one who, though seeking your spiritual good, was unskilful in the word of righteousness, how different your lot as a congregation would have been! But in him whom the Lord gave you, you had one different from both these. I believe there is not a conscience in this house destitute of the conviction that he is a man of God, and that he has a commission to preach the everlasting Gospel. There is not one in this house without the persuasion that in all his ministry he has been earnestly seeking the spiritual welfare of his people; and there is not one of you who will not be called to testify how faithfully he set death and life, the blessing and the curse, before you in all his preaching since he came to this place, I may also add that after an acquaintance, extending in the case of some of you to more than thirty-three years, you are all tempted rather to be proud than to be weary of him to-day.” The following is the minute then drawn up by the Free Church Presbytery of Inverness and presented to Dr Mackay:—

“The Presbytery, understanding that their venerable father, Dr George Mackay, completed on the third of September the fiftieth year of his ministry, deem this a fitting occasion for taking notice of the Christian life and pulpit power, which have won for him the position which he has held in the community and in the Presbytery, of which he has been a member for upwards of thirty-three years, and the honourable degree of Doctor of Divinity, which was conferred on him by his Alma Mater, on whose classical roll he held a distinguished place—a circumstance which must be gratifying to himself and to his numerous friends.

“They desire also to recognise the kindness of the Great Head of the Church, in having vouchsafed to their father that strength of body and mind, which enable him to minister without any assistance to one of the largest congregations in the Church, and respond to the numerous calls made upon him from various parts of the country; and they desire to assure him of their sincere prayer to God, that he may be long spared to declare to his attached flock the unsearchable riches of Christ.”

At his time of life, there are very few who possess that vigour of mind, and strength of body which enable him to go through the amount of Sabbath and week-day work which he undertakes. It is only about two years ago, that, for the first time, he had an assistant to help him in the varied and arduous labours of his charge; his ordinary Sabbath work being three services to crowded congregations. As an evidence of the vigour which he still possesses, at the last communion season, on the first Sabbath of July, he preached in Gaelic to a congregation of fully five thousand people, with all his accustomed power; and made himself heard by that great multitude. May my beloved friend be spared to us for years to come! May he find that “as is his day, so is his strength.” “The righteous shall flourish like the palm tree: he shall grow like a cedar in Lebanon. Those that be planted in the house of the Lord shall flourish in the courts of our God. They shall bring forth fruit in old age; they shall be fat and flourishing” (Ps. 92:12-14).

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 Mackintosh Mackay, LL.D.

Author: Rev. John Kennedy, D.D., Dingwall
Source: Disruption Worthies of the Highlands , page 79

Mackintosh Mackay

Dr Mackay was born in the parish of Eddrachillis, Sutherlandshire. His father was tacksman of the farm of Duartbeg, and a captain in “the Reay Fencibles;” an amiable man, and a pious Christian of superior intelligence and a consistent life. His mother was the eldest daughter of the Rev. Alexander Falconer, minister of Eddrachillis, an admirable woman, of a loving cheerful disposition, a delightful companion, a wise and disinterested friend, a devoted wife and mother, and an intelligent and devout Christian.

Their son Mackintosh was born in November 1793. After receiving at home an elementary education, his studies, preparatory for the university, were conducted in the parish school of Tongue, and afterwards in an academy at Ullapool, conducted by a Mr Pollock, who was quite competent so to ground him in Greek and Latin and Mathematics, as to enable him to follow the course of instruction on which he entered as a student in the University of St Andrews. Few young men from “the far North” ever entered college better able to take a prominent place in the classes than Mackintosh Mackay, with his unusual talent, his opportunities of preparation, his devotion to study, his capacity for enormous labour, and his conscientiousness in the performance of any work which was given him to do. He was not too young when he entered college in 1815. He still retained the receptivity of  youth, and the acquisitions of all the years of his teens prepared him for occupying an advanced position, at the outset of his course, which he continued to hold to its close. In 1820 he entered the theological hall at Glasgow. It was there chiefly his theological studies were conducted; but he attended during “partial sessions” both in Edinburgh and Aberdeen. During the recess, between his college sessions, he was employed as a teacher successively at Bowmore, Laggan, and Portree. He was licensed to preach in 1827, and in the following year was ordained and inducted as parish minister of Laggan.

During his incumbency there he completed his work as editor of the Highland Society’s Gaelic Dictionary. He laboured con amore in this great work, which required very extensive and minute acquaintance with the ancient classics, and with all that could be found under the name of Celtic literature, taxed to the utmost the time and strength of a man who never shrunk from toil, and was completed in a way which left little to be desired. The materials which passed into his hands from those of Ewen Maclachlan were not scanty, but were as yet unarranged. Than Maclachlan there was none more competent to perform what was required of a Celtic lexicographer; but death removed him ere his work approached completion. Most valuable were the fruits of his ripe scholarship and zealous labour; but his successor had a great deal left to him to do in the way of supplementing and arranging the materials which had been gathered, ere the work assumed the shape, and attained the completeness, of the published dictionary. In consideration of the great learning evinced in this work, he received, soon after its completion, the degree of LL.D..

Dr Mackay’s conversion took place before the period of his college life. He did not leave his home in “the far North” without the fear of God in his heart. He knew the gospel ere he was licensed to preach it. His ministry at Laggan was not fruitless. The Lord was with him from the outset, and the gospel which he preached was with power. But amid his literary labours, and in the society of those with whom, in gathering materials for his dictionary, he came in contact, his zeal began to wane, and his soul withered under a spiritual blight. But his backsliding was healed, and the love and joy of earlier days came back again, before his brief ministry at Laggan was closed. He himself thus described to the writer the means of his recovery. On a communion Sabbath, and while he was seated at the Lord’s table, the minister who was addressing the communicants, spoke of the guilt and danger, and of the course and causes of backsliding. Beginning with a soul’s first movement from “the mercy-seat,” he described with such minuteness the whole course of his declension, that he felt as if every eye in the congregation must have been fixed on him, so thoroughly did he find himself exposed before them. Venturing to look up, he saw every eye fastened, not on him, but on the speaker, who, after describing his very case, passed on to speak of the remedy, and to commend to the guilty backslider the merits of atoning blood, the riches of forgiving mercy, and the power of renewing grace. The word came to his heart with power, and ere he rose from that table he cast himself at the feet of Jesus in the hope of mercy, and with brokenness of heart and without reserve, surrendered himself anew to the Lord.

In 1831 he was translated to Dunoon. The charge of Logierait was offered to him at the same time, but he chose the more arduous post. In the restored fervour of his “first love,” he devoted himself to the duties required of him as minister of Dunoon. The territory embraced in his charge was wide, for the parishes of Dunoon and Kilmun had been united to form it. Even he could not, without an assistant, overtake the necessary pastoral work. At Kilmun there was a church in which the minister of Dunoon must occasionally preach; and beyond Kilmun lay the district of Ardentinny; while beyond Dunoon, on the other side, was the district of Toward. To all these places, during his ministry, summer visitors began to resort; and to provide the stated supply of preaching at each station, Dr Mackay laboured till churches were built both at Toward and Ardentinny, a new parish church erected at Dunoon, and the church at Kilmun repaired. In course of time he secured the aid of three assistants. The great labour of collecting funds for these objects was undertaken by him, and successfully accomplished.

After 1843, the same kind of work had to be repeated in connection with the Free Church. During the year from 1st May 1835 he travelled, within the bounds of his own charge, 1577 miles, visiting and catechising his people, holding meetings for prayer and exhortation, and in connection with various departments of parochial business. The record of that year shews no exceptional amount of work; it furnishes but a sample of the regular course of his service during the earlier period of his ministry at Dunoon. In course of time he was called to preach in other places with increasing frequency, till, in 1843, his fragmentary diary shews that in five months he preached seventy-seven times, and in twenty-five places beyond his own charge; and during 1845, one hundred and sixty-nine times, and in forty-seven places.

Amidst the bustle of Disruption times his labour was excessive. He travelled over almost all the Highlands and Islands, preaching the gospel, explaining the causes of the Disruption, and organising congregations in connection with the Free Church. Most uncomplaining was he during all that arduous toil. The ready response of the Highlanders to the call to separate from Erastianism, while carrying with them in their hearts the principle of national religion, was to him ample reward for all his wearying and wasting labour. To him, a Christian Highlander, this was solace most refreshing. The cause of Christ was prized, and the Highlanders were not dishonoured, and he was therefore glad. The joy thus occasioned bore him through toils which, looked at by a less resolute man, would have seemed impossible.

Most befitting was his appointment as Convener of the Free Church Assembly’s Committee on the Highlands. No man loved the Highlanders with a deeper love than his, and no Christian was more anxious for their spiritual welfare. Labour for their good he counted no toil. He shrunk not when he looked forward to it, and he cared not to speak of it when it was past. He was not the man to veil his face that he might not see a difficulty, but most carefully would he hide his hand that others might not see his work. The amount of correspondence, conference, and toilsome travelling which he undertook, in furtherance of his schemes for the benefit of the Highlands, is almost incredible. There are men who will not work unless they can climb to some housetop to proclaim what they are doing, and to tell what they have done. But Dr Mackay’s heart was set on doing work, and reaping fruit; fuss and ostentation he could not endure. No man was more laborious and reticent than he. To other eyes his schemes sometimes seemed utopian; and he himself, in prosecuting them, was regarded as intolerant by those who stood aloof, and who objected, when they should have sympathised and aided. His aim was single, and he was willing “to be spent” in labouring to attain his object. It was to him no recommendation of a scheme, that it could be easily carried out. He would fain fill his consciousness with labour when his heart was set upon an object, and the prospect of toil was to him rather a stimulus than a bugbear. “Our friend Mackay,” Mr Monteith of Ascog once said, “has a horror of short cuts.” In 1849 he was appointed Moderator of the General Assembly. His appearance and manner suited the position, and his addresses were such as to delight his friends, and to satisfy all that he sustained the dignity of the chair. The most powerful speech he ever delivered was one which he addressed to that Assembly. Stepping down from the chair, he took up his position, as Convener of the Highland Committee, beside the clerk’s table, and with rare power, and sometimes with thrilling eloquence, pled for a more generous consideration of the wants of the Highlands. The fervour of a Scot, the fire of a Highlander, and the zeal of a Christian, combined their forces in the motive power, that bore him onward in the course of his eloquent pleading. There were many in the house who, till then, knew not what Dr Mackay could do. His resources were drawn upon by the exacting demands of the occasion, and many then discovered for the first time how much was covered by his unobtrusive demeanour. To a coterie of admiring Celts it gave me small joy to see some fussy prattling Southerns cower beneath the torrent poured upon them by the Highland chief.

It seemed a strange way of shewing this interest in the Highlanders to forsake for a season his native land, and transfer his labours, as a minister, to Australia. It looked like an abandoning of schemes which he alone had started, and which only he seemed fitted to promote. But his going to Australia was the crowning proof of his deep love for his countrymen. He was ever prone to be sanguine. Unlikelihoods only roused him to exertion. He thought that all Highlanders who were amassing wealth in Australia would be ready to contribute to the support of the gospel in their native land. He expected to gather them into communities in the land of their adoption, and to enlist their sympathies, and combine their action, in behalf of the cause which he himself had so much at heart. He did not adequately take into account the power which “the love of money hath over men”, how it can close their hearts and hands and purses against the claims of the gospel. But his leading conscious aim was to secure a supply of the means of grace to the Highlanders, whom oppression had driven, and whom gold had drawn, from their native land. He accordingly brought the case of the Highlanders in Australia before the Colonial Committee and the General Assembly in 1852, suggesting the propriety of sending out a deputation to labour among them, and expressing his willingness to go if required. The Colonial Committee, on the recommendation of the Assembly, accepted the offer of his service, and appointed him a deputy to Australia. He at once resigned his charge at Dunoon, and started for the colony.

On the last occasion on which he was present at a meeting of the Presbytery of Dunoon and Inveraray, 5th July 1853, the following minute was drawn up and recorded: “The Presbytery of Dunoon and Inveraray, in parting with their highly esteemed father and long-tried friend, wish to record, as they hereby do, their deep and affectionate sense of his many noble qualities, gifts, and graces, and of his unwearied and remarkable labours, as a faithful minister and servant of Jesus Christ, not only in his own immediate pastoral charge, which he has filled for twenty-one years, and throughout the bounds of this Presbytery, as well as in the meetings of its courts, but also over the extensive district of the Highlands, where he has long been known as a father in Christ, seeking to advance the temporal and eternal interests of his passionately loved countrymen there. The Presbytery cannot but admire still more the singular grace of Christ in him which now appears, in that after a life of such devoted service to these most worthy purposes at home, he should have resolved to leave all the comforts and honours of his present position, and to go to undertake new and arduous labours in a far distant land. Many of his fellow-countrymen have been compelled by the hardships of their condition to quit their loved homes; but he goes, constrained, not by any such hard lot, but by a love of Christ and of them which he feels as a necessity laid upon him, no less difficult to resist than theirs. This Presbytery, his congregation, and the whole Free Church of Scotland, all unanimously feel the loss they sustain by his removal from among them; yet such is the view they take of his sacred motives and apostolic devotedness, as also of the immense importance of the vast rising colony of Australia to which he is about to proceed, that they have all, with one accord, willingly consented to give him to that work on which his heart is set, and to which, they are persuaded, his great Lord has called him.”

The Synod of Argyle recorded the following minute at their first meeting after his removal: “The Synod, taking into consideration the departure of the Rev. Dr Mackintosh Mackay from their bounds, for the purpose of prosecuting his ministerial labours in Australia, desire to record their sense of the great loss which the Synod have sustained in being deprived of the benefit of his eminent abilities, matured experience, intimate acquaintance with the business of church courts, urbanity and kindness towards his brethren, and enlightened and comprehensive regard to the interests of the Saviour’s kingdom throughout the bounds of the Synod. They would also record their sense of the great, and in some respects irreparable, loss, occasioned by his departure, to the spiritual and temporal interests of the western and north-western Highlands and Islands, to the promotion of which objects he devoted himself with unparalleled energy and perseverance, cheerfully undergoing the severest mental and bodily toil in organising and carrying out schemes for meliorating the temporal and spiritual condition of those districts, and employing with much success his extensive influence in the church and in private society to procure means for their relief.

“The Synod  would further refer with grateful recollection to Dr Mackay’s zealous, and, to a considerable extent, successful exertions to supply the deficiency of Gaelic-speaking ministers, by bringing forward suitable young men to be educated for the ministry, and providing pecuniary assistance to enable them to prosecute their studies.”

In April 1854 he was inducted as minister of the Gaelic congregation in Melbourne, in which charge he laboured for two years. He was in his sixty-first year when he landed in the colony; but during the first twelve months of his ministry there, he preached one hundred and forty-six times, and travelled 3081 miles, searching out and addressing the scattered Highlanders, besides ministering to the people of his charge in the great colonial city. In 1856 he removed to Sydney, and became minister of St George’s Church in that city. Leaving with his congregation at Melbourne an effective organisation and a handsome church, he undertook to provide both for his new charge at Sydney. In 1858 he came to Scotland to collect funds for his new church, and as a deputy to the General Assembly of the Free Church. Returning in 1859, he resumed his work at Sydney, and, with his wonted zeal and diligence, continued to labour there till his final return to his native land in 1862.

Not long after, he was settled in Tarbert, Harris, as minister of the Free Church congregation in that remote locality, and laboured on till failing strength compelled him to resign his charge. During the last year of his life he resided at Portobello, his interest in all that bore on the Redeemer’s cause still unabated, but feeling that he had outlived the generation that knew him, he looked regretfully on the departed brightness of other days, and anxiously towards the darkening prospect in the future.

His last illness was sudden. It seized him on his journey homeward from a meeting of the Synod of Glenelg, of which he was still a member. His bodily strength was shattered, and his mental vigour greatly weakened by the attack, but amidst the delirium of fever, and during intervals of wakefulness and pain, one object alone was in his view. He fixed his eye on Jesus, and sung of his beauty. He looked to “the land that is afar off,” and pined to be in it, till his Saviour came for him, and his ransomed spirit was borne to the rest for which he longed. He died 17th May 1873. His success as a preacher won for him his grave in that beautiful spot in which they bury their dead at Duddingston. A sister died not long before himself. At a loss to find a grave in which to bury his dead, feeble and downcast, he went forth in search of one. As he walked sadly along the road, he met a gentleman, who accosted him, and, learning the object of which he was in quest, at once kindly offered him a burying place, in which, after the interment of his sister’s remains, a grave would be reserved for himself. The reason he assigned for his kindness was his recollection of a sermon which he heard the doctor preach about thirty-five years before in the church of Duddingston, and which the preacher himself had quite forgotten. The text was remembered, and the leading ideas of the sermon, and the casual meeting renewed the impression made by the sermon when it came from the preacher’s lips. On referring to his notes, Dr Mackay found that on the very day so marked in the memory of the other, and from the very text he mentioned, he had preached just such a sermon as had been described.

Dr Mackay’s personal appearance was remarkable. Tall, with a handsome face and figure, and a dignified bearing, and in attire scrupulously becoming, none could look on him without feeling that he was no ordinary man. He was extremely reserved. He never opened up his heart but to a friend, and was far from ready to open even his mouth to any other. None was allowed to know him fully whom he could not fully trust. A reticence, which was the result only of abstractedness, made him sometimes seem austere; but no man could be more genial and entertaining when there was an attraction to draw him out. He shone in conversation only when in earnest or at ease. His mental resources were great, but he cared not to shew his wares in his window. 

 Always careful to have his own mind rightly informed about every subject on which he spoke, he lacked the power to present it vividly and pithily to others. He re-trod in an address all the ground he traversed in his thinking. Instead of the results, he gave the process of his study. This always made his sermons and his speeches lengthy. His train of thought was always in exact logical sequence, and he was always ready, without effort, to clothe his thinking with correct expression; but a redundancy of words concealed his power, as over-coating hides the form and muscle of an athlete. Only when he spoke under the impulse of strong feeling could the force of his thinking be felt by his hearers. His words seemed fewer then, because they were more rapidly uttered, and the thought seemed then to bear a fairer proportion to the speech. His preaching was always edifying. As a systematic divine, he was accomplished and exact, but his preaching was not distinctively dogmatic. He was quite as anxious to indicate the fruits of the truth as applied, as to unfold the treasures of the truth as revealed. Careful to distinguish a life of godliness from all counterfeits, he was wont to deal closely and searchingly with the consciences of his hearers. He followed the bearing of truth down to the every-day life of men as surely as he traced up its wonders to the counsels of Jehovah. And yet he was not a peculiarly practical preacher. All the necessary elements were found in his teaching, and none of them in preponderance. To an intelligent and earnest hearer he was always interesting, and not unfrequently he arrested the attention of all classes of his hearers, by the earnestness of his manner, and the eloquence of his words. But, best of all, he was a praying preacher. With a self-abasing sense of his own unfitness for the service of the gospel, he leant his weakness on Him whom he preached; and the power of God, in answer to his cry of faith, wrought revivingly in the hearts of the living, and raised not a few of the dead “into newness of life.” 

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 David Mackenzie

Author: Rev. George Mackay, Tongue
Source: Disruption Worthies of the Highlands , page 89

David Mackenzie

The late Rev. David Mackenzie, Free Church minister of Farr, was born at Polrossie, in the county of Sutherland, on the 20th day of September 1783. Mr Mackenzie’s father removed not long thereafter from Polrossie to Creich. Mr Mackenzie, after receiving the usual preliminary education, entered upon his college studies at Aberdeen about the year 1802. Students had not in those days the agency of steam to convey them either by sea or land, they generally travelled all the way to and from college on foot. In the interval of the college sessions, Mr Mackenzie taught for some years the parish school of Tongue. He was subsequently tutor in the family of the late Mr McLeod of Dalvey, and during his tutorship there, was licensed to preach the gospel by the Presbytery of Forres. Shortly thereafter, the Mission of Achness, in Strathnaver, a part of the parish of Farr, quoad civilia, became vacant, and Mr Mackenzie was chosen to fill the vacancy, and was ordained there in the year 1813. Strathnaver was then thickly peopled, there would be a congregation of from 600 to 700 worshippers, among whom were several well-educated men, and some who held high rank in the military service of the country, and of whom and of the other inhabitants very many, both of men and women, were eminent for piety, and their names are still savoury among the churches in the north. Mr Mackenzie, then young in the ministry, found them nursing fathers and mothers to him. Here he found himself moving in an atmosphere, morally and spiritually, exactly corresponding with that in which he was brought up under the parental roof. He was happy with his people, and they were so with him; they were mutually helpful to each other in walking the Christian course together.

After labouring at Achness for three years, he was translated to the Parish Church of Farr. He was there but a few years when the scheme of clearing Strathnaver, and many other places, of their inhabitants was concocted. Mr Mackenzie was applied to for his concurrence so as to give, it is supposed, a show of expediency to the measure; but this he absolutely refused to do. The scheme was, however, carried through; and he had the grief to see the people to whom he once ministered driven whithersoever they might find a place. One anecdote among many others he often told to shew the feelings of the dispossessed inhabitants and the desolation that ensued, was this: “An old woman who was in the habit, as many others were, of paying an occasional visit to the scenery of her youth, was asked on her return by one who was himself ejected, What did she see? She was sad and silent for some time. At last she said, ‘I saw a raven’s nest in the chimney of your own ruined house, and I saw the minister’s study turned into a kennel for dogs’.”

As minister of Farr, Mr Mackenzie was instant in season and out of season, preaching, catechising, visiting, marrying, baptising, directing the people in their difficulties, and sympathising with them in their sorrows. In public questions he took a firm and decided stand. When the Catholic Emancipation Act was proposed, he stood against it in the church courts, in opposition to friends who took a favourable view of that unhappy measure. The next great question that agitated the country, and in which he took a decided part, was “the ten years’ conflict,” which ended in the Disruption; but ere I proceed with the narrative, I would ask the indulgence of my readers for digressing a little, in order to refer to the late Mr Hugh Mackenzie, the father of the subject of this notice.

In his youth he enjoyed, in addition to the training of godly parents, the privilege of being under the ministry of godly ministers, for which the shires of Ross and Sutherland were then justly celebrated. He was early brought under the saving influence of the truth, and maintained a consistent profession of it until his death, at the age of 102 years. “The memory of the just is blessed.” In the year 1811, when an unacceptable minister was intruded upon the parish of Creich, he, at the head of the great body of the parishioners, took every constitutional means of opposing the intrusion, but their opposition availed not. The day of settlement came; the Presbytery, the presentee, and a strong guard of soldiers made their appearance at the church, and found its doors strongly blocked against them; the people crowded in front of the church with the hope of preventing an entrance, but swords, bayonets, and guns were too much for them; an entrance was effected, not in any sense by the right door. The settlement took place, the people retired, and regularly worshipped for very many years under the shadow of the Migdol Rock, without any other shelter save that which they enjoyed from Him who is “as the shadow of a great rock in a weary land.” Mr Hugh Mackenzie was an elder and catechist, and was looked up to by all as their leader and guide, though there were many other godly persons who took part with him in conducting the public worship at the rock. They are now mostly all in eternity. It was reckoned a bold step in those days, and one that required great firmness, to oppose patrons and proprietors. Still, resting on the Rock of Ages, it was taken; and the worship at the rock was conducted by Mr Hugh Mackenzie for many years, and until he left the parish, and by the people until the freedom of the Church was secured. They were firm in their resolution to maintain their principles, and to wait patiently until the Lord would send the gospel among them. Their hopes and prayers were not disappointed. They waited from 1811 (the date of the intrusion) till the Disruption in 1843, and during all that time there is the best authority for stating that not one of those who attended the meetings, either male or female, was ever before an ecclesiastical or civil court for any moral delinquency.

In the days of our conflict and disruption the leaders were encouraged and supported by thousands of rich and poor, of the learned, the noble, and the good; by the most distinguished of Scotland’s sons in theology, literature, science, and law; and by the sympathies of churches and people of other lands. It was comparatively easy to go out beyond the camp with such a noble multitude of supporters; but Hugh Mackenzie, backed only by the non-intrusionists of the parish of Creich, stood forth for the very same principles thirty-two years before. So much in passing for the father of the late Free Church minister of Farr, the Rev. David Mackenzie.

He inherited very much of his father’s mental qualities, and being brought up in the midst of such occurrences as have been described, and instructed from infancy by such a father in the principles of religious and civil freedom, it might be expected that his young mind would be impressed and bent in the same direction, for “Just as the twig is bent the tree’s inclined;” and it was so in this case. It is known that when he was a young boy he would go considerable distances to surrounding parishes on communion occasions. He had a most retentive memory, which continued almost unimpaired till within a year or two of his death. He remembered texts and many notes from sermons he then heard. He remembered events that happened, and men and things he saw, upwards of seventy years before.

When the “ten years’ conflict,” which ended in the Disruption, came, Mr Mackenzie proved himself to be the worthy son of a worthy father, and of illustrious reforming ancestors. He and the Presbytery of Tongue, of which he was a member, without one exception, left the Established Church at the Disruption, and the Established Presbytery  became defunct. There were two ministers of quoad sacra charges within the bounds, who professed great zeal for non-intrusion, but “when the day of battle was they turned back.” They were denuded of every right to rule and sit as members of church courts by the Stewarton decision of the civil courts, and in this decision they most obediently acquiesced. When the Disruption came, Mr Mackenzie left the Parish Church with the whole of the people, it may be said, for very few remained behind, and some that did afterwards followed the rest. He changed his residence, but not his principles or congregation. He cheerfully took up his position, like many of his brethren, on the green dell, in the gravel pit, or canvas tent, to preach the Word and administer the sacraments, not only among his own people, but also in surrounding parishes. He took his full share of those extra labours which the ministers of the Disruption know well and remember. Mr Mackenzie joined the Free Church without the least hesitation or doubt that he was following in the path of duty. He studied the questions at issue calmly and thoroughly; and he never cast a lingering look after all or anything he abandoned on that day – a memorable day in Scotland – that he took up his position in the procession to Canonmills to conduct the affairs of Scotland’s Church made free. He was fully persuaded in his own mind. Mr Mackenzie continued to minister to his flock at Farr, and to the few resident farmers, shepherds, and servants inhabiting Strathnaver, until a few years before his decease, when the Free Church sanctioned the district as a preaching station, and subsequently as a ministerial charge. The Strath is upwards of twenty-five miles long, and when travelling over it to preach and visit the widely-scattered families, and viewing the waste places he saw, formerly sending forth from every glen and valley hundreds upon hundreds to the place of worship, he said that his soul was invariably impressed with a deep feeling of sadness, and that he was often in the habit of meditating on certain passages of Scripture which were descriptive of the desolations around him, and singing portions of psalms, such as the 74th Psalm:

This Sion hill, wherein thou hadst
Thy dwelling in times past.
To these long desolations
Thy feet lift, do not tarry;

For all the ills thy foes have done
Within thy sanctuary.
With them into God’s house I went,
With voice of joy and praise;

Yea, with the multitude that kept
The solemn holy days.

On his completing the fiftieth year of his ministry, he was presented with a handsome sum of money contributed by admiring friends throughout Sutherland and Caithness. The collectors, A. S. Macdonald and John Mackenzie, Esquires, deserved praise for their labour of love in the matter. At the same time there were presented to him an easy-chair and a silver plate, bearing the following inscription, which sufficiently indicated the feelings of respect of the donors: “Presented on the 25th November 1863, to the Reverend DAVID MACKENZIE, on the completion of the fiftieth year of his efficient and successful labours in the parish of Farr, Sutherland, by attached and admiring friends, many of whom have been benefited by his ministry, and all of whom have been edified by his example.

His mind, by grasping envy unalloy’d,
Traced to God’s hand the bounties he enjoy’d;
His firm unwavering faith, at Duty’s call,
Without delay or doubt surrender’d all.
Mid dire bereavement’s pangs, serene and calm,
He sought and found the Great Physician’s balm
Grace, mercy, peace, descended from on high,
Sooth’d the sad heart, reviv’d the drooping eye.
Devoted brethren’s reverence and love,
Earnest of holier sympathies above,
Shed a pure beam on each revolving year,
And now burn brightest when the close draws near.”

On the following Friday the remains were carried to their resting place in the churchyard of Farr, by a large multitude from Farr and all the surrounding parishes, there to rest till the last trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God and live. When the procession was moving slowly from the manse to the place of interment, every rock and hillock which commanded a view of the line of procession was occupied by groups of sad-looking women and children, to take a last view of the remains of the minister who baptised and married the most of them, and was the kind friend and instructor of them all; their melancholy looks and bearing indicated their sorrow. 


 

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 The Mackenzies of Tongue – Hugh Mckay Mackenzie and William Mackenzie

Author: Rev. A. G. MacGillivray, Edinburgh
Source: Disruption Worthies of the Highlands , page 233

Hugh McKay Mackenzie

Hugh Mckay Mackenzie was born in the manse of Tongue on the 13th May 1771. His father, the Rev. William, was well known in Sutherland as “the great minister.” “Mr Hugh,” after studying in Marischal College, Aberdeen, was licensed to preach by the Presbytery of Tongue, and was ordained in 1796 by the Presbytery of Caithness as chaplain to the “Reay Fencibles.” He accompanied the regiment to Ireland, where afterwards he became chaplain to the “Fraser Fencibles,” and was connected with them until they were disbanded in 1802. Whilst serving in Ireland, he urged upon the military authorities that the Roman Catholic soldiers should not be compelled to attend his services. When his remonstrances were yielded to, the Roman Catholic soldiers were deeply grateful, and of their own choice regularly attended his ministry.

He was for three and a-half years assistant to the Rev. John Dunbar, minister of Dyke; and in November 1806 he was admitted as assistant and successor to his father at Tongue, in consequence of a harmonious call from the elders and heads of families, and with the cordial concurrence of Lord Reay, the only heritor. He laboured until January 1834, along with his venerable father, who died at the age of ninety-six. “Mr Hugh” was sole pastor until 1842, when his son William Mackenziewas ordained as his assistant, upon the hearty call of the whole people. In 1813 “Mr Hugh” was married to Mrs Grace Mackenzie Russel, who proved in all respects a true helpmate.

From my boyhood I knew “Mr Hugh” well; but from the close of 1838 I knew him more intimately than did any one else, excepting his nearest relatives. I lived for about two years in his immediate neighbourhood, and spent more of my time in “the manse” than in my own house. He was certainly the most loveable and the most fascinating man I ever knew. He had all the frankness and joyousness of a boy, and all the tender-heartedness of a woman; whilst a braver, manlier, more generous, or more courteous gentleman, I never met with. His piety was deep and ardent, and wondrously child-like; whilst his humility was almost painful, ever esteeming others better than himself. In the pulpit he had not the disciplined intellect or the reasoning power of his father; but few men could speak with more simple eloquence of the love of God and of his Christ, or more tenderly bring that love to bear on the hearts of his hearers. But whilst in his ordinary pulpit ministrations he was excelled by many, I never saw him equalled as a pastor at the bed-side of the sick and dying, or in a bereaved home. I had frequent opportunities of thus seeing him, and he then alway called up before my mind his Master – “afflicted in all our afflictions,” “going about doing good, and healing all that were oppressed of the devil.”

He loved his parish and his people intensely. A word of admiration expressed for “Ben Loyal” or “Castle Vharich” drew from him a grateful smile and bow; whilst an act of kindness done to one of his people knit his heart to the doer thereof. His liberality to the poor was literally unbounded. I once remonstrated with him because of an act of what seemed to me reckless generosity. He was silent for a moment, and then replied with deep solemnity, “I owe all to mercy: I must be merciful.”

He was, I think, the most unselfish and forgiving man I ever knew. He was absolutely incapable of any revengeful feeling. There were some who took advantage of his easy kindness, and deeply injured him; but he invariably heaped “coals of fire upon their head,” resolved to “overcome evil with good.” He had a wonderful sympathy with the young, in their joys and sorrows, in their difficulties and struggles, so that in any perplexity they more frankly consulted him than any friend of their own age. I never knew any minister so loved and admired by his people. We were all proud of him, and as we counted “Ben Loyal” nobler and more beautiful than any other mountain, so we counted “Mr Hugh” the loveliest and noblest of men.

Mr William Mackenzie was born in the manse of Tongue, on the 21st June 1816. He studied first in King’s College, Aberdeen, and afterwards in Edinburgh, under Dr Chalmers. He was licensed to preach in 1839, and ordained as his father’s assistant in February 1843. He had a more robust and more trained intellect than his father, and was a clear, massy, and very powerful preacher. He lacked, I think, his father’s fancy and tenderness; but the burning earnestness of his religious convictions gave great power and impressiveness to his preaching. In private, he was a most intelligent and courteous Christian gentleman. Both father and son were from the first decided “Non-intrusionists.” But it was the question of “spiritual independence” that stirred their spirit to the depths. And the old man was quite as clear and decided in his views as his son. True, indeed, when told authoritatively, “that not one inch would be given him for a site for either church or manse,” the thought of parting from his beloved people cost him such a struggle, that to some, who knew him little, it seemed as if he were hesitating what to do; but we, who knew him well, knew that he never wavered in his decision. And when the Disruption came, none forsook the Establishment for the Free Church with a more united heart than “Mr Hugh.”

Mrs Mackenzie and her daughters went to live in Thurso, forty miles distant, whilst the old man and his son lodged in one end of the parish teacher’s house. The change from the comfortable manse to these confined lodgings, and the lack of his wife’s society and loving attendance, told heavily upon his health. He never openly complained of his discomforts; but in his private letters to me he said repeatedly, that “they were killing him.” Latterly he was attacked by bronchitis, and his son by bilious fever. Another and a better pen than mine has pictured the death-bed of father and son:- “I intended to have entertained you with another despatch to-morrow, not supposing that I would find time to write one to-day, or rather this morning for it is morning still, and Mr Carment, honest man (who is standing out well and in great good spirits and is the best of company, full of pious, pungent, and witty observations), is still in bed.

“I had intended to have breakfast with the aged minister here, who, on my sending him notice of our arrival, came last night to see us. He lives with his son, who is his assistant and successor, in a bedroom in the parish schoolmaster’s house. He is seventy-five years old very asthmatic. His son is ill of a bilious fever, and he himself has suffered so from the exposure of last night, that a boy has just come, riding through a hurricane of wind and rain, to say that Mr Mackenzie will not be able to receive me to breakfast. His family live forty miles away, about Thurso. He pays for their accommodation there £35 per year. His manse (former one, I mean) is just at hand – the finest, save Arbirlot, I have almost seen – and now the old man rents a bedroom and bed-closet in his parish at four shillings a-week. His family have had possession of the manse for nearly a century, and he himself has spent several hundred pounds in improving it. The people here are all Free Church, save a few big farmers.

“P.S. I have just returned from seeing Mr Mackenzie. The way to his home is along the arm of the sea, out to the Northern Ocean. The day was fierce, with wind and rain beating hard in my face. After passing the beautiful manse which he had left, a mile or two further on I found the old man’s shelter, in a mean cottage school-house under the lee of a heather hill. Before the filthy doorway there stood a broken cart and a black peat-stack, not a flower adorning it. There is a ‘but and a ben,’ with a small bed-closet off it. In the end with the closet the minister is sheltered.

“I had just time to learn that the livelong night he had been very ill, when I stepped into a mean apartment, which is dining-room, library, bedroom, and all; and there, beyond the bed, sat the old man, half dressed, in a high-backed black chair, over which his grey locks were falling, he himself deep buried in the sleep of exhausted nature. I stepped up to him, but he stirred not. I stood for a while, and looked on the touching picture, thinking, oh! if I had any of the men here who are persecuting our poor Free Church, surely they would be moved by such a sight as this; then, stealing across the floor, I pushed open the closet-door, and found his son stretched on his sick-bed, all the worse from hearing through the long night, while unable to relieve them, his father’s sufferings. I stayed for a minute or two with the son, who was, amid it all, thankful that he did not lie on that fever-bed a renegade, that his conscience and his father’s were at peace.

“Every daisy on the road had its cup closed; and surely, thought I, if God in this storm so protects these little flowers, he’ll not desert these two faithful servants – the venerable old man and a son worthy of his sire. I confess when, on my return, I again passed the manse, and looked on its smooth lawn, and chimneys, and neat, trim walks, I felt my corruption rising.” (Memoir of Thomas Guthrie, D.D., vol. ii. p. 92.)

His elders came to bid their old minister farewell, and he welcomed them with the same courtesy and overflowing kindness as of yore. A few hours before his death, a woman, whose child had been ill, entered the room, and the dying man recognised her, and whispered, “Ask her how the dear child is.” He afterwards inquired eagerly, “If William could be brought into the room to bid him farewell?” and being answered “that William was too ill for that,” the old man looked upwards, muttering with dying lips, “Thy will be done,” and shortly thereafter without a struggle entered into his rest. He died on the 30th June 1845.

His body was carried into the schoolhouse in order that his son might be removed from the confined bed-closet where he lay, into the room which his father had occupied. William requested to see once more his father’s face, and so the body was brought back to the room. He silently kissed the cold lips, and from that time “he took the measure of an unmade grave.”

They had loved one another very greatly. William had been much agitated and distressed by his father’s moaning heard in the adjoining closet, but the silence that now ensued was more trying to him. He lingered on for upwards of three weeks, when, resigned and humbly expectant, on the 28th July, he too “entered into his rest.” “They were lovely and pleasant in their lives, and in their death they were not long divided.”

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 Charles Calder Mackintosh, D.D.

Author: Rev. William Taylor, M.A., Stirling
Source: Disruption Worthies of the Highlands , page 53

Charles Calder Mackintosh

He was born in the manse of Tain on the 5th October 1806. His father, Dr Angus Mackintosh, of that town, was a minister peculiarly venerated in the north of Scotland. His maternal grandfather, great-grandfather, and great-great-grandfather had also been devoted and eminent ministers. He was very amiable and reverent from childhood; but it was when, in his seventeenth year, and during the third session of his divinity studies at Glasgow, that he passed through the grand crisis of his spiritual history. He then came under very deep convictions of sin, in which, seeing himself cast on the sovereignty of God for salvation, yet rebelling against that sovereignty and perplexed to see how the free offer of the gospel was reconcilable with it, haunted too by threatenings of the Divine Word that seemed to shut the door of mercy against him, he fell for months into a state of despondency well-nigh despair. A correspondence with his father was, along with the perusal of Fuller’s Gospel worthy of all Acceptation, much blessed to him, and his distress gave place to “continual delight in contemplating and in appropriating God in Christ.”

His severe studies preparatory to licence brought on an illness which so injured his constitution as to make him a life-long sufferer. At the unanimous solicitation of the people of Tain, he was in 1828 ordained as his father’s colleague, but was immediately thereafter laid aside by returning illness for two years. During that trying time his spiritual distress returned; the sense of indwelling sin, together with the temptations of Satan, so overwhelming him, that he questioned the reality of his previous conversion. But with the restoration of comparative health he experienced also a great spiritual enlargement, and in July 1830 he resumed, or rather fairly commenced, his ministerial work. It was then seen that God had dealt with his young servant very graciously in permitting him to be so afflicted and tempted; preparing him by this means for special usefulness in his service.

The writer has had the privilege of listening to many of the great Disruption preachers; but he has never heard one who seemed to him to combine in an equal degree a deep sense of the divine holiness with an adoring faith in the divine mercy; none who more impressed his hearers with the exceeding sinfulness of sin, or who had more of the spirit of Him who “breaks not the bruised reed, and quenches not the smoking flax.” Dreading to utter unwarranted opinions, he sought to declare only “the testimony of God,” and did so with a clearness and comprehensiveness that shewed how carefully he studied it, and with an unction and pathos that shewed how deeply he felt the truths he uttered, and how truly they expressed his own experience. And yet he shunned every allusion to himself, and (as a friend has expressed it) “while you listened to him, the man disappeared from your sight as completely as the Baptist from the view of his disciples when he pointed to the Lamb of God.” His pulpit manner was characterised by a mingled dignity and humility that commanded his hearers’ respect, and by a reverence that solemnized them; his style was lucid and chaste, his delivery graceful; his thoughts, always weighty, had frequently a beauty and elevation that attracted even the thoughtless; and his sermons, without the play of fancy or the sparkle of obtrusive originality, produced – one could not describe how – an altogether peculiar impression. His habitual sense of the divine presence made that holy presence be felt wherever he was; but this so as to influence for good, not to oppress. The smile of sweet benevolence on his fine features lighted up the room he entered, and he could take part with playful enjoyment and pure quiet humour in conversation on the lighter incidents and oddities of life; with his familiar Christian friends his society thus was rendered very delightful. But not only was the holiness or dignity of his character never compromised by the most playful intercourse, it was felt thoroughly to harmonise with it, and to confirm, not to weaken, even the most solemn Sabbath impressions. His preaching was not of a  kind to encourage superficial profession. But there is abundant evidence that much fruit for eternity attended his ministry. This fruit was gathered for the most part in a quiet way, but at one time also amid the excitement of a great awakening.

This was in 1840, when there was an extensive movement in Ross-shire, connected largely with the labours or Dr Macdonald of Ferintosh. There had been much prayer during the previous year on the part of Dr Mackintosh and his elders for the outpouring of the Spirit; a deeper earnestness pervaded the congregation, and during the summer communion season, under a Gaelic sermon by Dr Macdonald to a crowded audience from the whole district around, the smouldering fire burst into a flame. There was at first much outward demonstration, which Dr Mackintosh, without authoritatively repressing, never encouraged, and which, as autumn advanced, gradually disappeared. Then the permanent fruit began to appear. It was found that many who had carefully concealed their emotions were more deeply impressed than those who had publicly manifested them; and in the following year Dr Mackintosh felt himself warranted to state his belief that there was in the district “a genuine revival of religion, the work of the Spirit of God,” attended by “those blessed results for which a minister of Christ would desire to live and die.”

The ten years’ conflict of the Church of Scotland began and ended during his ministry at Tain. His religious principles, his clearness of mental vision, his unswerving conscientiousness, his love to the Redeemer and the closeness of his walk with God, made it certain on which side he would be found, and how he would act in the day of trial. With his brethren he had a strong impression of the value of a rightly constituted establishment; but he saw that no external advantages the State afforded would justify the surrender by the Church of her freedom to obey all the will of her divine Lord. Like Dr Robert Gordon of Edinburgh, he was constrained to sever himself from State connection “by the compulsion of his conscience.” But, like the same and other honoured men, he could testify that in such a compulsion, amid all attendant losses and sufferings, there was exceeding peace and joy.

The following graphic account of the effect produced on the youthful mind of the son of one of his elders by the minister’s demeanour, on the morning when tidings reached Tain that the State had declared its ultimatum, making disruption inevitable, will interest the reader: “One morning, in the spring of 1843,” writes Mr Taylor Innes, advocate, “I jumped early out of bed, for my head was full of marbles and pegtops, and a dozen or so of games before breakfast has its attractions for a schoolboy. To my astonishment I found my father down before me; nay, he had evidently been there for some time, for the moment I appeared he folded up the newspaper in which he had been so unseasonably engaged, and, with a break in his voice indicating an emotion that was quite unaccountable to me, he asked me to take it at once to the manse, with his compliments to the minister. My visit was shorter than I anticipated; for I had scarcely got out of the sunshine into the manse evergreens when I found the minister in the porch, and when I offered him the newspaper he shewed me that he had already got the Times by some unusual express, and as he spoke he patted my head and smiled – but such a smile! so full of radiant kindliness! I was confounded; and as I went back between the hedges the birds sang unheeded while I thought what could have come over the minister. Had anybody left him a fortune? Or had he met one of the shining ones walking among the hollies in that early dawn? And it was not for some weeks that I found out that this was what had happened: the newspaper that morning had brought him the vote of the House of Commons, finally refusing an inquiry into the affairs of the Scottish Church, and so making it certain that within a few weeks he would leave for ever the home at the door of which I saw him, in which his father had dwelt before him, and which he now would have to leave without stipend, and not knowing what was before him. Of course he came out.” And when the day of actual leaving came, he wrote, amid the usually naked entries in his “Journal of Employment of Time” these words: “1843, May 18th. A memorable day for Scotland; separated, with all my heart, from the State.”

“He seemed,” said a Christian lady, the late excellent Lady Home, in whose house at Edinburgh he resided during the Disruption Assembly, “he seemed to feel as if he were treading on air.” How miserably have some men failed to appreciate the heaven-breathed peace and joy which filled the hearts of the true witnesses of Christ on that day, when, having overcome the manifold temptations to sin against their own conscience and to compromise the honour of the Redeemer’s crown, they found themselves honoured to bear testimony for His authority to the whole world; found themselves too, by the unexpectedly large number of faithful ministers and followers of Christ from all Scotland who constituted the Free Assembly and its audience, placed on a vantage-ground for promoting His cause such as they had not dared to anticipate; so that “their mouth was filled with laughter, and their tongue with singing,” because “the Lord had done great things for them, whereof they were glad.”

Dr Mackintosh’s people accompanied him out, with very few exceptions. They met with him in a wooden building, hurriedly erected for temporary use; all the magistrates of the burgh, preceded by their red-coated, halbert-armed officers, walking in procession to the Free, as they had been wont to do to the Established Church. Almost all over the northern Highlands a similar spectacle of nearly unanimous adherence to the Free Church was witnessed. To such as know the respect felt in that district for faithful ministers of Christ, as well as the feeling of religious and ecclesiastical unity (due largely to the system of inter- parochial communions), which made the people of each parish esteem all faithful ministers their ministers, while worldly ministers even if nominally their own they condemned and despised, this adherence is intelligible; especially when it is remembered that quite as large a proportion of persons in the Highlands understood the principle of the Disruption controversy as in the south, and that among the ministers whom they followed were such men as Dr Charles Mackintosh. The fact of his espousal of the Free Church cause was, with not a few, equivalent to many arguments that it must be the cause of justice and holiness. The Honourable Mrs Hay Mackenzie, of Cromarty, by whom Dr Mackintosh had been presented to Tain, and who was patroness of a large number of other parishes in Ross-shire, was a benevolent and pious lady, who had always made her presentations a matter of conscience, so  that she naturally did not see the necessity for the Disruption, and expressed her mortification that “all her ministers” were leaving her. “Is it not,” said one of them, the Rev. Charles Matheson, of Kilmuir-Easter, to whom the complaint was made, “is it not, madam, the highest testimony that could be given to the manner in which you have exercised your patronage?”

Dr Mackintosh’s labours, great and numerous for one in his always delicate and often feeble health, were continued in Tain for eleven years after the Disruption; but then he became so ill that he accepted a call to the lighter charge of Dunoon, on the milder west coast. A man more reverenced and beloved never left the north. In Dunoon he was able to labour for nearly fourteen years, there also winning widespread love and reverence, receiving many seals to his ministry, and exercising a variously beneficial influence. Ministers who have risen to eminence in the Church have acknowledged that they felt his preaching, his character, his weighty judgment, and the stedfastness of his convictions, together with his warm personal sympathy, to exercise a power for good over them such as they had never felt before, and which helped greatly to lay the foundations of their future usefulness.

The stedfastness of his convictions here referred to did not however make him shut his eyes to what seemed to him new duties arising out of altered circumstances; witness his decided advocacy of the cause of union in the controversy that before his death had begun to agitate the Free Church. Neither did it prevent an expansion of his own spiritual views and preaching. A comparison of his manuscript sermons, as preached by him in his earlier and later ministry, enables us to bear testimony that while he preached the very same gospel from beginning to end, he grew in the freeness with which he stated the divine offer of Christ and his Spirit’s grace to unbelievers; the verbal changes made by him in re-writing old sermons being decidedly in this direction. This was to the writer a very interesting discovery when he made it. 

In the spring of 1868 his health utterly broke down, and he was finally laid aside from work. With his family he repaired to Pau in the south of France, where, however, he rapidly sank, and breathed his last on the 24th November. “The confusion of my mind” – these were among the last words he uttered under the distressing sense of mental wandering – “cannot separate my soul from God.” He took leave of his family, one by one, with affectionate exhortations suitable to each, and soon thereafter fell gently asleep in the Lord.

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 Murdo Smith Maclean

Source: Memorial Minute: Presbyterian Church of Victoria

The Rev. Murdo Smith Maclean gave faithful service to the Presbyterian Church in three countries—Scotland, England, and Australia.

He was born in Stornoway, in the Island of Lewes, in 1862, and belonged to the Free Church of Scotland. His early years were spent in the vocation of teaching, but he was led to dedicate himself to the ministry. Four years were spent at the Glasgow University (1883-1887), and he obtained his theological education in the Theological Hall of the Free Church in Glasgow. In 1898 he was ordained, and inducted into the pastoral charge of the Free Church Congregation in Arisaig—his only charge in Scotland. He then received a call to England, where he laboured first in the charge of Stockton-on-Tees, and later (1920-1928) in the Sandringham Road Church in West Hartlepool. While there, he married an Australian girl, Miss Florence Howell, of Kew, who was on a trip to the Old Country.

The strain of work necessitating a rest and change, a visit was paid to Australia. Returning to England, his health again gave way, and Mr. and Mrs. Maclean decided to take up permanent residence in Australia (1928). Their home was in Wellington Street, Kew, and Mr. Maclean’s work began with a year’s strenuous work at Hartwell, then in its early stages of existence. He became associated with the congregation of Hawthorn West, and did much useful work in the Eldership. He was Representative Elder in Assembly and Presbytery for seven years. He gave most valuable assistance to the minister of the Congregation, and frequently took the service at Abbotsford, which was a kind of dependency of the Hawthorn West Charge. The Gaols and Hospitals Committee also found a ready helper in him, and in many other ways he gave faithful service. A Gaelic Service, conducted by him in the Kew Church, and attended by Highlanders from all quarters, will be long remembered. He died on December 4th, 1943.

The Rev. Murdo Maclean was first and foremost a man of God. No one could be long in his presence without becoming conscious of a profound reverence of spirit in him. But he was a genial and most friendly man of God. He loved his fellowmen, and keenly enjoyed their fellowship in work and recreation. Springing from his unaffected godliness, there was, in all his contacts with others, a quiet dignity of demeanour and an old-time courtesy which never deserted him. He was modest and unostentatious to a degree. He never spoke in our Assembly. He loved, and was loved by, both young and old, and when he died, it was a great sorrow to many friends.

To his widow the Assembly tenders its sincere sympathy.

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 Peter Maclean

Author: Rev. Neil Dewar, Kingussie
Source: Disruption Worthies of the Highlands , page 213

Peter Maclean

A remarkable spiritual awakening began in Lewis in the year 1823. The late venerable Mr Macleod of Rogart was the minister of Uig, and his parish received no small share of the blessing. In November 1825 Peter Maclean came under the power of the truth. It happened one evening, from some cause or another, that the duty devolved upon him of conducting family worship in his father’s house. He had never undertaken the duty before. The portion of scripture selected was the sixth chapter of Hosea. He had read but a sentence or two when he was arrested by the arrow of conviction entering his soul. He got to the end of the second verse only, when he was obliged to pause and go back again to the beginning; but sobs choked his utterance, and he was unable to proceed. His convictions were deep and thorough. Yet, in the midst of his own alarm and anguish, he thought of the souls of others, and that very night, he went to the neighbours around, and called upon them to rise from their beds and seek God’s mercy for their souls. The people were awe-struck. Some rose and began to pray; and there was one at least whose after life gave sufficient evidence that his arousing that night issued in a saving change. Having found rest in the Saviour himself, Mr Maclean became possessed with a peculiarly ardent desire for the conversion and salvation of others. This constituted, to the last, one of the most prominent features of his character. In course of time he lost all heart for his present occupation, and he resolved to give up his business, and to prosecute his education with a view to the ministry, should the Lord be pleased to make his call to the office clear to him. In winding up his affairs he gave a singular proof of his love to the brethren, by blotting out of his books all sums due to him by them.

After a short attendance at the Grammar School of Aberdeen, he entered King’s College in that city in 1828. The following session he went to Edinburgh, where he completed the usual literary and theological courses. In 1832, at the request of an association of ladies who interested themselves in the matter, he undertook a mission among Highlanders, especially non-churchgoers, in Edinburgh and Leith. His work was to visit them during the week, and address meetings on Sabbath evenings. He became deeply interested in this work, and the Lord countenanced him in it. It was therefore very reluctantly that in 1832, yielding to the solicitations of friends in Lewis, he quitted this field, and accepted the parish school of Uig, which became vacant then. In 1836 he was licensed. Soon thereafter a call was sent him from Highland settlers in Cape Breton, some of whom had known him before they emigrated, and he felt it to be his duty to accept it. He was accordingly ordained to the mission in 1837. On his arrival there, he at once threw himself into his work with characteristic zeal and thoroughness. The field was very extensive. Taking up his head-quarters at Whycocomah, he extended his labours over the whole island, and preached almost daily. From the outset there was a thirst for the word on the part of the people, manifested by the crowds that came out to hear. After a time it became manifest that the Spirit of the Lord was at work. In 1839, it was discovered that many had been brought under concern for their salvation. It was the first droppings of a shower. A deep and wide-spread awakening or revival soon followed. To all Mr Maclean’s other labours of preaching, promoting schools, distributing books, selling Bibles, there was now added what was to him a grateful task, that of visiting, or receiving at his house, multitudes of anxious inquirers. It is a striking testimony to the reality of the work, as well as to the soundness of his discernment, that while on a visit to the settlement, many years afterwards, he was informed by his former elders, that all those to whom he and they had given credit as having been truly converted, were continuing stedfastly and consistently in their Christian profession. Along with the exhausting toil involved in the amount of ministerial work performed, Mr Maclean often suffered from the exposure and fatigue of long journeys through the settlement. He might say that he was “in journeyings often, in perils of water, in perils in the wilderness, in weariness and painfulness, in watchings often.”

The following will suffice as samples. On one occasion, returning home by night across a frozen lake, after having been overheated while preaching, he is seized with a dangerous illness, and his life is despaired of. Another time, while far from home, he is overtaken by night and a furious storm, and is glad to pass the night in a log cabin, sharing the accommodation – ten feet by twelve – with children, parents, grand-parents, and a black stirk! On another occasion, being in haste to overtake a meeting of Presbytery, he has to urge his horse through a forest on fire, while burning branches fall all round. But so long as his strength holds out, and his Master’s work is prospering in his hand, he is happy, and toil and hardship are little thought of. He had a physical frame of rare power and proportions; but no mortal constitution could long stand the strain to which his was subjected. After labouring in the colony for five years, his strength completely gave way, and he was obliged to return to Scotland, in 1842, in such a shattered state of health that his friends scarcely expected him to recover. After a short period of rest, he recovered his strength in good measure, and he felt it a sin to be idle.

The times were stirring, for the Disruption was now imminent. Necessity was laid upon him, above all things, to preach the gospel, and he resolved to do so in those parts of the West Highlands and Islands where, under the blighting reign of Moderatism, the need was greatest. His fame as a powerful preacher soon spread far and near. Wherever he went, immense crowds flocked over moors and seas to hear him. The effects were remarkable: oftentimes large assemblages seemed powerfully moved as one man, numbers being unable to refrain from giving audible expression to their feelings. The fruit is never so abundant as the blossom in the moral and spiritual any more than in the physical domain, the history of the Church does not warrant the expectation that it should, but genuine fruit did follow, much of which has been harvested, while some remains to this day.

Mr Maclean was in Edinburgh on the day of the Disruption, and, with his whole soul, went with the faithful in the land, who, in that supreme hour, witnessed such a good confession; rejoicing that so many were found ready to sacrifice their earthly all for Christ’s crown and the liberties of his people. He accepted a call from the Free Church congregation of Tobermory, and was inducted to that charge in August 1843. Soon after his settlement, he married a lady of superior piety and gifts and social position, who proved truly “an helpmeet,” not only in respect of personal and domestic comfort, but also as regards every good work. With all the energy of his ardent nature, he applied himself to his work in his new sphere. While diligently and systematically cultivating his special field – for he was always a thorough pastor, his solicitude extended to all the surrounding regions that were but scantily supplied with the means of grace. He made frequent preaching journeys to Ardnamurchan and Morven, as well as to various places in the island of Mull. The Lord continued to countenance his labours: for years a manifest blessing accompanied them.

While his great aim was to be instrumental in bringing souls to Christ, he was the redoubtable champion of Free Church principles. His zeal and success in this respect gained for him the honour of being summoned to London in 1847 to give evidence before the Sites’ Committee, where, as is well known, the enemies of the Church sought to create a prejudice by collecting and sending up all the severe things spoken, or alleged to have been spoken, by Free Church ministers against the residuary Establishment.

In 1853, at the request of the Colonial Committee, Mr Maclean visited the Lower Canadian Provinces as a deputy from the Free Church. One of his first services was to dispense the Lord’s Supper at Whycocomah. It was a profoundly stirring, but solemn scene. “I may truly say,” he writes, “that I never witnessed a more solemn and interesting communion season.” Such a large gathering had never been witnessed in those quarters. Two hundred boats moored in the bay, and five hundred horses tied in the woods, may serve to give an idea of it. It was estimated at about ten thousand. Mr Maclean prolonged his visit in the Provinces till November, scarcely resting a single day; a sermon, an address on the Nova Scotia Professorial Fund, or on the Church question, almost every day; sometimes sermon and address, as well as the journey, within one day. In the course of this mission he travelled 7289 miles, and preached ninty-one times, besides prayer-meetings and addresses. 

During his pastorate at Tobermory he refused proposed calls from various congregations at home and in the colonies. No minister could be more revered than he was by his people. But circumstances tended gradually to loosen him from the place, and to raise the question of a change of sphere. More particularly, there was the loss of a full half of his congregation, by emigration, or removal to the south, occasioned by the destitution which followed the failure of the potato crop. When therefore a call from the Free Church congregation of Stornoway came to him in 1855, he was disposed to entertain it, though it was only after much conflict and earnest prayer for light that he saw it to be his duty to accept it. He was inducted at Stornoway in June. His labours in this immense congregation were very abundant, preaching three times every Sabbath, conducting two or three meetings during the week, along with other pastoral duties. Though here he met with a good deal to vex and discourage, yet he had also tokens of the presence and countenance of the Master. In 1859 especially, a time of revival visited his congregation, and other congregations in the island. There was on the part of the people a great thirst for the means of grace, to meet which week-day services had to be multiplied, and an assistant had to be engaged for a season. As the fruit of the movement, not a few were added to the Church. In 1861 Mr Maclean’s health again completely broke down, and he was laid aside from active work for two years. This to him was a great trial, not alone on account of his physical suffering, but chiefly because, to use his own words, “the Lord has been pleased to deprive me of the one thing that I had asked, that I might be engaged in preaching the gospel. My highest ambition on earth was to preach Christ crucified to poor sinners, and to enjoy fellowship with himself and his saints in his house.” His trouble yielding to no medical treatment, a sea voyage was recommended, for which the liberality of his people at once supplied the means. He sailed to Boston, U.S., but returned by the same ship by which he went out. While on the passage, prostrated with his complaint, this entry he makes in his journal: “Here I resolved and promised the Lord that, should he spare me and give me strength, I would cross the same sea again to America to preach the everlasting gospel.” It was not till the spring of 1863 that, with somewhat impaired strength, but with unabated zeal, he was enabled to resume work. In 1866 he was induced by the earnest representations of some of the Lord’s people in Nova Scotia and Cape Breton, to undertake a mission to those provinces, under the auspices of the Colonial Committee, with the view of endeavouring to heal divisions and strifes arising out of the union of the Presbyterian Churches. On his arrival he was at once deep in his work, preaching five sermons a-week, sometimes with encouraging tokens of an impression being made by the word. With regard to his efforts to heal division, he writes:- “This has been my most difficult duty in the settlements. In some places a good deal has been done to reconcile parties; but in other places my labour in that respect has been quite unavailing. How hard to persuade those to peace whose hearts are untouched by the grace of God!” On his return home he resumed his duties with cheerfulness and hopefulness; began to lay out plans of ministerial work for the winter; and often expressed a hope that the Lord would visit the congregation with times of refreshing. But his work was done: henceforth the ministry of active and earnest work must give place to that of patient suffering and waiting. That winter, while returning from the communion at Uig, he got wet, and caught a severe cold accompanied with a cough, which ultimately assumed the form of plastic bronchitis, and baffled every remedy. For fifteen months, eight of which he was confined to bed, he suffered much. Excepting one short interval, his mind was always clear, and his soul in perfect peace. He was often heard repeating in low tones, “Sweet Jesus, sweet Jesus;” and, more than once, “I have served a good Master, a good Master.” The good Master came at last, and dismissed him from suffering to rest and reward. He died on the 28th of March 1868.

Mr Maclean was of large commanding figure, considerably above the middle height, erect, and finely proportioned; his physiognomy, his firm elastic step, and the whole aspect and carriage of him indicative of decision and energy. He possessed great force of character; and no one could know him without being struck with the entireness with which he was devoted to his Master’s work. The grand aim, manifestly, was always paramount. Manly, straightforward, conscientious, he disdained ignoble ends and motives, and carnal policy. The purity was as conspicuous as the strength of his character. He was most uncompromising and faithful in maintaining what he believed to be Bible truth and principle, and in reproving error and sin. He feared not the face of man, nor shrank from reproving and exhorting in private, as well as from the pulpit. As a preacher, he was forcible and effective. Possessing a vigorous mind, a lively fancy, a ready memory, and a warm heart, he apprehended his subject vividly, and could expound clearly, and illustrate graphically. In manner he was earnest and impressive, sometimes vehement, anon, tender and pathetic, his voice tremulous with emotion. The day will declare his success in the ministry. On this subject he himself was extremely reserved: he never, in fact, spoke of his own doings. Once a paragraph in a colonial paper, in which he was spoken of as the spiritual father of thousands, was referred to by his wife, who asked him if it were true that his labours had been so extensively blessed. “It would have been better,” he said, “if the writer of that notice had used the word ‘hundreds’; yes, I think he might have said ‘hundreds’.” That was the only reference he ever made to the matter. We cannot, however, doubt that he was largely instrumental in turning many unto righteousness, and that to him belongs no obscure place among those who shall shine as the brightness of the firmament, and as the stars for ever and ever.

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 Alexander Macleod

Author: Rev. G. L. Campbell, Glasgow
Source: Disruption Worthies of the Highlands , page 221

Alexander Macleod

In the interval between 1819 and 1824 Mr Macleod officiated as minister, first of the Gaelic Chapel of Dundee, and afterwards of that of Cromarty, with what measure of success in either case the writer of this sketch is, owing to the lack of information, unable to say. In the year 1824, however, he was settled as parish minister of Uig, in the island of Lewis, and it is worthy of note that this was the first settlement of an evangelical preacher that occurred in the known history, not only of Uig, but of the whole Long Island. It should not be forgotten here that the instrument in God’s hand in bringing about this happy event proved to be the late Honourable Mrs Stuart Mackenzie, a name very dear to the Christian people of Lewis, on account of her warm sympathy with evangelical preaching, and her continued and effective influence in securing the appointment of men of God in the various chapels and parishes throughout the island. It was due mainly to her efforts that, in addition to the introduction of a gospel preacher into Uig, Mr Finlayson of Lochs, Mr Cook of Ness, and others found fields of ministerial labour in the religious waste of Lewis.

At the distance of more than half a century, it is not easy to form a conception of the religious and moral condition of Lewis previously to the year 1824. The present writer has heard a still living minister of the Free Church, who is a native of Uig, declare publicly that only two or three copies of the Bible could be found within the wide extent of the parish, and that he himself travelled a journey of days in search of a copy of the blessed book, and all in vain. Nor would it have availed in the case of all but a few individuals, even if copies of the Word of God were in their possession, literal ignorance so absolutely prevailed on every hand. Schools were unknown; no attempt had ever been made to open up to the people the avenues of knowledge. The entire population was left to perish for lack of knowledge. Until the Gaelic School Society commenced its operations in Lewis, the densest intellectual and spiritual darkness held universal sway. Notwithstanding the pleasing features that characterise Highlanders, even in their most primitive condition, this state of things could not fail to be attended with baleful fruits. Despite their constitutional warmth of heart and loyalty of nature, unbending fidelity to what they esteemed to be honour, and their unbounded kindness and hospitality, many gross vices were found commingling in the characters and lives of the Lewis people. And Uig was by no means in a better position than other districts. In some respects their moral standing was even worse.

As an illustration of this it may be stated that the natives of Uig, being located for the most part on the western shore of Lewis, and thus facing the Atlantic, had, in days when lighthouses and Lloyd’s agents were unknown, frequent experience of the material benefit accruing to them on the occurrence of a wreck on their dangerous coasts. The writer has never heard them accused of using any positive measures to further such a catastrophe, unless it can be considered that petitions addressed to the Supreme Being might prove to be such. For, however strange it may appear, at the first prayer-meeting which Mr Macleod attempted to hold at Uig, one of the former elders actually offered a request that a wreck should be cast ashore in the neighbourhood; while another elder, referring to the death of our Lord as a misfortune, used strong expressions of deprecation of its having at all occurred.

One instinctively demands an explanation of the existence of a spiritual desolation so complete as Lewis and Uig in particular presented, at the time referred to, especially when the fact is taken into account that a stated Protestant ministry had for a considerable time been settled among the people. The answer is easily furnished; the Lewis ministry was not evangelical. Moderatism held the land in sole possession; it had an opportunity of shewing its nature and effects without let or hindrance; there was nothing to disturb or modify its reign; and the island of Lewis during its supremacy furnishes a crowning instance of its secular selfish indifference to the eternal interests of souls, and its blighting effect on the moral and religious nature and susceptibilities of men. Nor did it act merely in a negative indifferentist manner; Moderatism contained in itself elements of positive distaste to gospel truth and enmity towards gracious influences and experience. Signs of life and earnestness aroused its hostility; it regarded anxious inquiry about the soul’s chief concerns as a phase of mental aberration; it would have put down seriousness with a high hand. There are Lewis people still living, one at least in the ministry, who passed through a fiery ordeal at the hands of Moderate ministers and unsympathetic blood relations when the great question, “What must I do to be saved?” pressed heavily upon their hearts. As a matter of course it was perfectly compatible with this system to grant toleration to superstitions and superstitious observances which had been handed down through the dark ages of Popery from the still darker ages of Druidical idolatry. Acts of adoration, having for their object the heavenly bodies, were common, and in some instances were witnessed by Mr Macleod himself, according to a statement publicly made in the hearing of the writer. It is scarcely necessary to state that family worship was unknown among the people, and even at the manse. For although the public ordinances were dispensed as a matter of form, they exerted no practical influence upon the conduct. They rather tended to lull more profoundly asleep by imparting and maintaining a feeling of security to the poor dark benighted souls who participated in them. It has ever been the wont of the Moderate clergy to huddle their flocks to the Lord’s table without respect to the qualifications Scripture enjoins on those who take part in this solemn ordinance.

In the Highlands, at all events, their looseness in regard to admission to this ordinance as well as in regard to discipline in general has swept away every barrier, and set an open door before all and sundry, without respect to character or Christian intelligence, and even profession of belief. It should almost seem that communicating was looked upon as a passport to the favour of heaven by ministers and people alike. At any rate, that religious act was allowed to stand for almost the whole body of religious duties, personal, family, and public. At the outset of Mr Macleod’s ministry in Uig this was emphatically the state of matters which existed there, and its leading apparent cause was dead, formal, faithless, cold Moderatism in the pulpit.

It is requisite here to guard against the impression being formed that the first rays of gospel light rose upon Uig contemporaneously with the induction of the first evangelical preacher into that congregation. This is not so. The honour of first introducing the light of truth into Lewis and Uig belongs to the Gaelic School Society. Only the day shall declare the blessed fruits of the labours of the godly men sent forth throughout the darkest parts of the Highlands and Islands by that Association of Christian philanthropists. When Mr Macleod commenced his exertions in Uig, he found that all the people on attaining a certain age flocked to the Lord’s table as a matter of course, and that eight or nine hundred were actual communicants. Nothing could be clearer than that the whole state of their intelligence, or rather want of intelligence, spiritual standing, and general character was utterly unbecoming the place at the communion table which they had been induced to occupy. They did come to church in tolerable numbers from the very outset of Mr Macleod’s ministry; but, at the best, only to indicate that “stupid attention” which reveals the vacant mind and unsympathetic heart. The poor people could not help being struck by the contrast between the earnest and faithful demonstrations of law and gospel which were now proclaimed with a loud voice in their ears, and the monotonous repetition by rote of the meagre and almost meaningless stock of less than half-a-dozen discourses which formed the treadmill-round of pulpit exercises in former days. Here, for the first time, was a preacher who shewed by his whole manner that he had in hand business of eternal moment to his hearers. That business was to warn them of the wrath to come, which impended over unpardoned Christless sinners, and to proclaim the way of escape by the open door of a crucified and risen Saviour.

As ever, the preaching of Christ crucified was felt to be the power of God in Uig also. Not more than two months had elapsed since Mr Macleod’s admission when the “stupid attention” and vacant stare passed into the wistful anxious listening, the suffused eye, the tender, subdued manner, and in some cases the heart-wringing inquiry, “What must I do to be saved?” In addition to the Sabbath services a lecture was held on Thursdays, and prayer-meetings were regularly conducted. Nor were the means of education neglected. Every exertion was made by the devoted pastor to plant schools throughout the parish in every suitable centre of population. And never were minister and people more favoured in regard to teachers, both Gaelic and English, than the minister and people of Uig during the whole period of Mr Macleod’s ministry among them. A list of the teachers who laboured in Uig within that period would include future ministers of highest eminence and usefulness in the Highlands, such as the late Rev. John Macrae, the late Rev. John Finlayson, the late Rev. Peter Maclean, the Rev. Alexander Maccoll, and others. After carefully considering the spiritual circumstances of his flock at the outset of his labours, Mr Macleod came to the conclusion not to dispense the Lord’s Supper during the first year of his ministry. He decided that it was his duty to declare to the poor people the whole counsel of God as he might be enabled, and to wait for some time to see what God, by his grace, might work. In the interval between his induction and his first communion, probably about two years, Jehovah had come down, and the mountains had flowed down at his presence. And albeit it may sound strange in some ears, one affecting and significant proof of the mighty change that had come over men’s minds and feelings meets us in the fact that only five of eight or nine hundred communicants of Moderate days communicated at the first dispensation of the ordinance by Mr Macleod. In all, only nine communicants participated on that occasion; but, as Mr Macleod used afterwards to remark, there was good reason to believe they were without exception worthy communicants.

A very early effect of his work was the extinction of various worldly and pernicious customs and amusements to which the people had been previously addicted, and the substitution of meetings for prayer, diets of catechising, day and evening schools, family worship, and other spiritual exercises, in their room. Many at the outset felt greatly aggrieved at the new order of things. Meanwhile the Lord stood by his servant, and the word mightily prevailed against all opposition. The Spirit of God passed as a breath of life through the valley of dry bones. Multitudes were moved out of their unconcern about eternal realities, a great thirst for the word of life was excited in many hearts. The fountain which sovereign grace had unsealed in the spiritual wilderness of Uig became the centre of attraction, not only to the people of that parish, but also to the whole population of Lewis. Incredible efforts were made by earnest souls in all parts of the island to be present at the preaching of the Word, even on ordinary Sabbaths. Men, and even women, travelled from Ness, Back, and Knock, distances of from twenty to forty miles, to Uig Ferry from Saturday till Sabbath morning to overtake the boats for church, which often required to leave very early on account of head winds, and the distance to be travelled by sea, which cannot be less than ten or twelve miles. Sometimes mothers with infants in their arms might be seen among the companies of gospel pilgrims to the well of ordinances at Uig. No barrier but physical weakness was insurmountable, no labour grudged to get within hearing of the joyful sound; and not in vain was this taking of the kingdom by violence – light, life, and refreshing were graciously communicated to not a few through the Word by the mouth of Christ’s faithful messenger of peace.

Although Uig became thus a place of resort to thirsty souls on ordinary occasions, it was during communion seasons that the most extraordinary interest in divine things was revealed. It has been stated on the best authority that, in the year 1828, four years after Mr Macleod’s settlement, the whole island seemed to be moved by one powerful spiritual impulse, and that nine thousand people flocked from all parts to the Uig communion. In 1833 a vast concourse of people, many of them from Harris, Uist, &c., attended at the dispensation of the Lord’s Supper. At these gatherings the Spirit of the Lord was with his servants and people, new cases of awakening ever occurred, believers increased in light and love, and the cause of Christ received, in various forms, new accessions of strength, while Satan’s old rule of darkness, superstition, and folly, seemed tottering to an irretrievable overthrow. Perhaps the most remarkable feature of this work of grace was the spirit of prayerfulness which it excited, and the extent to which it pervaded the community. Between the intervals of public worship, and after it was over, especially on communion occasions, every retired spot for miles around would be occupied by a secret worshipper, wrestling with God for the blessing on his own soul and that of others. It was quite common for one, who wished to be entirely alone with the Hearer of prayer, to be under the necessity of travelling miles into the moor or mountain to find a place of complete secrecy beyond the sight and sound of anxious pleaders at the throne of grace. It sometimes happened that an earnest one spent the whole night in the solitude of the moorland in communion with God, unconscious of the outward circumstances or situation until the morning sun appeared in the sky. Did space permit, it would be easy to cite eye-witnesses, who were strangers, to Lewis, of the extraordinary spirit of devotion which animated the people as a body at the time referred to. In all circumstances, on sea and land, God was acknowledged as the Giver of all good and the Shield of his people. Another beautiful aspect of this work was the union of practice with prayer. A naval captain, who lay off the island at that time, and who had many opportunities of observing the ways of the people, bore this testimony: “They are an extraordinary people here; one cannot but be struck with their honesty, kindness, and sobriety. I think I have never seen a drunk person out of the town. One hears of religion elsewhere, but one sees it here in everything.” Contemporaneously with the visitation of this dayspring from on high, the grace of liberality to the cause of Christ was first evoked among this people. Its initial exercise was in connection with the Gaelic School Society, and many touching instances occurred of their thoughtful sense of obligation to that institution. In 1835 the Uig people contributed £20 for church extension, an effort which gratified Dr Chalmers very much, and occasioned the observation on his part that about a third of that sum would have been a handsome contribution, considering their circumstances at the time, for the congregation of Uig. Ideas of liberality have expanded since 1835; but even that small beginning could not have been made apart from the descent of the blessing upon Lewis.

It is appropriate to record here the testimony, regarding the state of religion and morals, produced by the revival under Mr Macleod, borne by the late Rev. John Macrae towards the close of his life. After the most varied experience of the work of God in the Highlands, this competent judge, who had the best opportunity of forming an opinion, declared that the finest moral spectacle he had ever beheld during his whole course was presented by the congregation of Uig under the pastorate of the Rev. Alexander Macleod. Uig and Lewis afford a fine illustration of the preparation for the Disruption which was being carried on by God’s gracious Spirit through the agency of godly ministers and people. There is a natural alliance, or rather an organic connection, between the doctrines of grace and the doctrine of Christ’s Headship, for which the Church of our Fathers was called to testify and contend during the conflict which issued in the severance of the Church from the State in 1843. And this connection has its counterpart in the religious history of the evangel and the kingly supremacy of Christ as Head of the Church, and as Head over all things to the Church, have not been found in our history, any more than in the nature of things, separable into two distinct and independent interests. If the one suffered, the other suffered with it; prosperity in the one laid the foundation for victory as regards the other. Without a divinely-prepared people for the day of decision the eloquent demonstrations of Chalmers, the resistless logic of Cunningham and Candlish, the profound insight into affairs of Buchanan, even the ready self-sacrifice of hundreds of noble ministers of the gospel, were all in vain. But the watchful exalted Head, embracing in his glance all the future, knowing his own purpose, and the appointed time and manner of its accomplishment, foreseeing the fiery ordeal through which men and their professions were soon to pass, prepared the congregations of his people, whom he meant to honour as witnesses for his truth and kingly crown in Scotland, and by preparing them, gave effect to the contendings and testimony of his servants in the high places of the field by securing the embodiment of their principles in the great fact of the Disruption Church, through their enthronement in the hearts of the people.

When the memorable 18th of May 1843 dawned, no part of the country was readier to rally round the banner then displayed, because of the truth, than the island of Lewis, almost to a man. And no individual influence contributed to this result in anything like the same degree as that exerted by the minister of the parish of Uig. He was not, indeed, as at first, alone in the Presbytery of Lewis. The Rev. Robert Finlayson had been at Lochs for many years, and had passed through a somewhat similar experience of divine blessing on his congregation to that already related in the case of Uig. Both were found faithful to their trust, and equal, by God’s mercy, to the day of trial; but the first in the field, and the foremost in influence, was the minister of Uig. 

It is a mild expression to use that these devoted winners of souls did not hesitate about the course to be followed. It was an unspeakable relief to their spirits to escape by one decided step at once from the bondage of State control and the chilling atmosphere of Moderatism. The cold indifference of the latter to the welfare of immortal souls was as unbearable to their warm Christian hearts as the tyrannical exactions of the former were galling to their high sense of what was due to Zion’s sole King. Nor did the people shew less heartiness in the Disruption movement than their ministers. Even where evangelical preaching was lacking, and the minister of the parish remained in the Establishment, the popular movement inclined unanimously towards the cause of the suffering and protesting Church of Scotland, with the exception of a small handful of people in Stornoway. Subsequently to the Disruption, the work of grace continued to bear fruit in Uig and Lewis generally. It was long noted by those interested in the extension of the Kingdom of Christ, that no communion passed without traces of the divine presence in the rousing of careless sinners to soul concern. Even down to the present time, there are tokens of the gracious working of the Spirit on men’s minds, although it is a day of small things compared with the past, and, in the case of some, a day of stumbling and instability. How humbling to behold the first reaction in favour of worldly and Erastian principles, albeit on a small scale, and under the influence of delusive and false representations, manifesting itself on the spot where the gospel banner was first unfurled in Lewis! But there is a God that judgeth in the earth, and his time to vindicate his cause shall come. “Offences must come, but woe unto that man by whom they come.” In December 1843, Mr Macleod was translated from Uig to Lochalsh, and thence to Rogart in May 1846. In the course of his labours in these later fields of usefulness, he was not left without seals of his ministry, but, so far as man could see, there was nothing to bear comparison with the great ingathering attending his Lewis ministry.

After presiding over the Rogart congregation for twenty-three years, he died on the 13th day of November 1869, full of years, and ripe for his reward. In reviewing the character and qualifications of this saintly man, in connection with his successful efforts to save souls, one comes in contact with the simplest and most harmonious elements of intellectual and moral worth. He was a man of average intelligence who had concentrated all his faculties on the study of the Holy Scriptures, and on winning souls. He possessed in great degree a keen insight into men’s character, and shrewdness and tact in dealing with them, combined with the simplicity and transparency of a childlike nature. And all through his Christian life he was a man greatly beloved, not merely by God’s children, but by many besides who enjoyed his accquaintance. He was truly an evangelist. The impression he never failed to make upon those who observed his demeanour was, that necessity was laid upon him to be about his Master’s business. Even in ordinary intercourse with his fellow-men he watched for opportunities of commending Christ, and he wisely embraced them when they offered. But after all it was in proclaiming in the congregation the message of salvation that his whole force of character appeared. Brilliancy or even eloquence in the ordinary sense formed no part of his aím or study. The engrossing purpose of his life and energies was to pluck brands out of the fire, and to speak comfortably to Jerusalem. Such ministers as he have proved the strength and glory of the Church of our Fathers. May a succession of like-minded men never fail our beloved Church or country! They are very signally God’s gifts to his Church on earth; and the lesson of their lives is summed up in the inscription on Mr Macleod’s tombstone in the Rogart churchyard: “BY THE GRACE OF GOD, I AM WHAT I AM.” 

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 Thoughts on a Minister’s Jubilee
I. The Spheres of Labour

Author: Rev. Ewan Macleod
Source: The Monthly Record of the Free Church of Scotland, August, 1927, pages 196-198

[Note: Ewan Macleod wrote several articles under the title Thoughts on a Minister’s Jubilee. Only the first one is reproduced here. The others do not contribute much to the story of his life.]

I would have preferred to steal out of the world without any mention of a ministerial Jubilee as pertaining to me for I feel greatly humbled as touching such an event. Moreover, I have realised that it was when my health failed, and since then, that I have felt myself ripening into a condition of spiritual understanding of divine things, in which I should rejoice to endeavour to make full proof of my ministry, and exalt Christ in preaching Him. My outstanding thought in view of this occurrence of a Jubilee is that I feel greatly humbled when I review my many shortcomings. Yet, I would bless God for the high honour put upon me in having been put into the sacred office; and I humbly declare that, in what I would call my best moments, the work of that office was to me very delightful, and surpassing in spiritual grandeur; and with deepest conviction I would bear witness to the truth and reality of a divine revelation, of the founding of the Church and the Christian ministry by Christ. Let us glance at the spheres of labour.

1. Duthil
It was on the last Saturday of May 1875, that I first set foot on the soil of that parish. A probationer, and a namesake of my own, residing in Edinburgh at the time, was wishful to attend the meetings of the General Assembly and asked me – then in charge of the Gaelic mission at Leith – to go to Duthil on that Sabbath, and that he would take my place. At that time I did not know where Duthil was, but my experience on that Sabbath was very agreeable. We had three services. The first text was Psalm 119:19: “I am a stranger in the earth: hide not Thy commandments from me.” The congregation of Duthil was then vacant, and in a week or two I had a letter from the responsible parties, asking whether I would entertain the proposal of a call from the congregation sixteen months hence, when I might be licensed. Without binding myself, or them, absolutely, we left the matter at the disposal of Providence; the call came in due time, and I was ordained there by the Presbytery of Abernethy, on the 14th of September 1876. Our first text as minister and people was Micah 7:14: “Feed Thy people with Thy rod, the flock of Thine heritage, which dwell solitarily in the wood, in the midst of Carmel let them feed in Bashan and Gilead, as in the days of old.” Ever since that date that text has been to me very fascinating. It was a beautiful representation of the people of Israel dwelling in the valleys and woods of
Canaan. It seemed also to apply very forcibly to that most beautiful wooded and quiet Highland parish.

Messrs Logan and Mathieson, the two ministers before me, were excellent men, and their work was fruitful, but substantially the general religious life in the parish had sprung up in connection with the labours of able lay men from Sutherlandshire, who acted as catechists in Duthil for some years. Not a few excellent leading men, who were natives of the parish, sprang up at that time, and a goodly number of the general community became promising, so that the fields were now white unto the harvest. Among those excellent men were William Grant, Robert Cumming, John MacIntoslı, Duncan McGregor, Duncan Cameron, Peter Cumming, Peter McKenzie, Alexander Watson, Alexander Cumming, Lachlan McIntosh, Donald and Duncan Cameron, Carr, George Allan, Donald McGregor, John McGregor, and a good many more of less note. Among “honourable women” there were Miss Grace Grant, a connection of the Seafield family, and other admirable members of her sex. Excellent as this goodly stream of religious life was, some of the leading men, from the teaching they had received, manifested a tinge of separation. If the minister was so disposed, he could easily fall out with such a frame of mind, but if he appreciated true piety, yielded a little now and then, in matters not vital, and steered his course wisely, he found these good men the very life of the congregation. Duncan Cameron, who was by occupation a smith, was catechist during the first ten years of my time. He and I were always good friends. He took great pride in the work of catechising. Starting on one occasion on the winter’s campaign, he asked a neighbour, John MacBean, to come with him and help him. “Yes,” said John,” but you must pay me.” “Certainly, I will pay you,” said the smith, “when your work is done.” When the catechising was finished, John demanded his pay. “You have done very well,” said the smith, “and this is your pay – ‘When ye shall have “done all those things which are commanded you, say, we are unprofitable servants: we have done that which was our duty to do’.”

After him, in the sphere of catechising, and also in the sphere of holding the men’s meeting, which had then been held in the parish for at least two generations, came Duncan Fraser, a man of fine Christian character, with whom I had most profitable intercourse, and parting with whom in 1893, when the Free Presbyterian Church set up its standard, was the sorest ecclesiastical experience of my life. Separation from Duncan Fraser was the principal cause of my leaving Duthil. I must leave it on record, however, that we were good friends until the very end.

I myself also catechised the congregation everyone of the seventeen winters I spent in Duthil. That entailed a good deal of work but it was interesting work and a great help to the preaching, because one came to know the general spiritual condon of the people – their knowledge and their ignorance. In my preparation for the catechising I acquired a love for the Shorter Catechiem, for which I am thankful. The discontinuance of catechising has been a great loss to the Church. Most decidedly, it should not have been discontinued in the country parishes, and its desuetude has been part of the Church’s receding before the spirit and influence of the world. Every minister who has had experience of catechising must agree with the excellent German divine, Krummacher, who, when on a visit to England, penetrated as far as Scotland, and there became acquainted with the Shorter Catechism. On returning to England, his host asked him,” What news from Scotland?” “Great news from Scotland,” replied Krummacher. “I got in that country for one halfpenny the best book on divinity outside the Bible which I have ever seen.”
=If I were permitted to begin my work again, my system of catechising would be the following: In my visiting of every household, which I would make to be systematic, I would take up one of the Shorter Catechism questions, give the household to understand something of its meaning, try to get them to understand something of the treasures of divinity stored up in it, and so make them to love that little book, and to find comfort and instruction in it. Similarly every Bible class, ministerial and lay, should begin with repetition and suitable explanation of a Shorter Catechism question. To this day there is nothing which affords me more comfort than to meditate on, say, the questions which speak of the benefits which believers receive in this life, at death, and at the resurrection. Very earnestly and respectfully, I commend this practice to every minister of the Free Church. The Free Church should resolve at all costs to make the Shorter Catechism what it was intended to be by the eminent divines who prepared it, a great instrument of spiritual instruction for the people.

With pleasure and gratitude, I should here mention that the Rev. Dr Calderwood, Professor of Moral Philosophy in the University of Edinburgh, took up summer residence at Carr Bridge for ten years before his death in 1897, and manifested great kindness to me and to the congregation. During the summer months of these years he conducted the evening service in the church at Carr Bridge, and thus enabled me to go to one of the outlying districts. The congregation and I and the many visitors that then began to spend summer holidays in the parish, greatly appreciated the distinguished philosopher’s simple and evangelical preaching. Professor Calderwood endeared himself to all concerned. The congregation showed their appreciation of those services by presenting him with an address in 1895. Dr Calderwood was also largely instrumental in the erection of the Carr Bridge Public Hall.

It was at Duthil that I met and got my dear wife. She was a woman of rare excellence of Christian character and wisdom, and was to me through all the years of our married life more than I can tell. The Lord’s Cause, the welfare of the Free Church, the interests of the congregations in which we laboured were unceasingly near her heart. Her prayerfulness, her staid wisdom, her unobtrusive but strong purpose in well-doing, her beautiful Biblical mysticism, with many other attractive features of Christian character, led those who knew her best to think of her in the words of inspiration: “Many daughters have done virtuously, but thou excellest them all.” My readers will forgive this reference which is by no means extravagant. The remembrance of the nineteen years in Duthil is exceedingly pleasant, and will be while life lasts. My mental view of that congregation affords the recollection of excellent church attendance and of appreciative hearing.

2. Oban
Our parting with Duthil was very painful, and it was in the midst of a heavy snowstorm, but the Oban congregation gave us a most handsome and hearty welcome, That congregation had also lost some of its best members in connection with the Free Presbyterian Secession. The most noted of these was a Mr Crawford, a man of outstanding force of Christian character and worth, but there remained a good, hearty, and friendly congregation in the Free Church. Kindly frankness, friendliness, and liberality characterised that people throughout the years we were together as minister and people. Since I have known it, there has been a notable set of wise, courageous, and brave women who have been and still are a distinction and a creditable asset to the congregation. In connection with the Free Presbyterian Secession, the pious and prominent men came to be divided between the congregations. For instance, a Captain Donald McCallum, who was a very worthy man, sided with the Free Presbyterian cause. On the other hand, a Captain John McCallum was an excellent elder in the Free Church congregation. He was laid up in his death illness when I went to Oban. On my first visit to him, he met me with this salutation, “How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him that bringeth good tidings!” Another notable man, an office-bearer, was Mr Alexander Brown, banker and steamboat agent. Mr Brown was by that time an elderly man. He had valued and loved the Gospel, and it was stimulating and delightful to see the venerable man in tears while listening to it. Yet another outstanding, most useful and now very venerable man was Mr Hugh Skinner. He was for many years headmaster in the Oban school, and after resigning that post held another important position in the town. In the substantial interests of the congregation Miss Skinner has been the leader of the honourable women who deserve the kindly gratitude of the church. Mention must be made of one other admirable office-bearer, Mr Neil McKinnon, who in point of piety and beauty of Christian character came second to none.

Besides the work of the Oban congregation I was, to begin with, moderator of ten other congregations. Embracing Easdale to the rear, those other congregations are situated on the mainland of Argyllshire, round by Fort William to Ardnamurchan Point, and in the islands of Mull and Coll. The work implied in all that meant a heavy drain on my strength, and while I loved my work and people in Oban, I felt necessitated to seek a change. Without any movement on my part, a call came from the Dornoch congregation in the spring of 1905, after the House of Lords litigation and its many trials had tested the Oban congregation and consolidated them. A strong and trial-enduring congregation, the Church may always rely upon Oban as splendidly faithful.

3. Dornoch
The wrench in parting with the kind and faithful people of Oban was trying enough, but it made a great difference that the people of the town and parish of Dornoch had known the Gospel for a long time. Not only was the fruit of the labours of faithful ministers in evidence, but the equally happy results of the influence of outstanding godly men and women were discernible in the religious cast and mould of the people. The manifold labours and godly life of Sheriff McCulloch, one imagined, were still apparent. For over forty years the sheriff was a burning and a shining light in the town and parish. He was not a separatist in the sense in which Sandy Gair and John Grant were. He was a constitutionalist. He carried on his own most effective religious work in the parish, maintaining at the same time wise and friendly terms with the minister. He countenanced church services, but also held week-day and week-night services, which were largely attended by the people of the parish and by many from surrounding districts. During my early years in Dornoch a small but willing committee collected funds to the amount of about £300, by which we were able to set up a monument in memory of the sheriff, very near the spot where his meeting-house had stood, and we also invested a sum of about £200, a trust in the hands of a few Dornoch men, yielding an annual sum of about £10, which is given for prizes for religious knowledge in the schools throughout the county. This monument and these prizes will do something to keep the good sheriff’s memory green in his native county.

The evangelical revival which practically began with the nineteenth century had its happy effect in the parish of Dornoch and throughout all Sutherland. Much good seed was sown in all the parishes throughout the century, and much of the fruit of that sowing indeed, almost all of it may by this time be said to have been gathered in the form of king’s mowings. Only a few old and outstanding Christians, who took root then, still remain. In this respect one likes to linger in thought on the favoured parish of Lairg.

The Dornoch people were a Gospel-loving people, and very respectful to all rightly administered Church ordinances. The communion seasons were cases, refreshing to true pilgrims, and very strengthening to the Lord’s cause in the community. For many years previous to 1893 there was perhaps no kirk session in Scotland which could rejoice in such a galaxy of fine men as then composed the Dornoch Free Church Session. Memory lingers with delight on the worth and character of these splendid men. Most unhappily the Free Presbyterian Secession drained away some of them, yet a goodly number were spared during all my time. Only one of those old veterans is now left, in the village of Embo, by name Peter Fraser, and for many years considered an eloquent and fruitful speaker to the Question. There has been a tradition to the effect that Sandy Gair, a bright lay luminary, declared on one occasion that God would have witnesses in the parish of Dornoch until the day of judgment. It was with deepest grief that I felt myself constrained to leave my work in Dornoch. My visit to Canada in 1913 entailed upon me a severe strain, and made a breach in my health which left me no hope of my being able to do further work. The lesson I was then called to learn was submission, and in course of learning it, how often and how earnestly have I desired to be allowed to begin again.

When health obliged me to leave off my loved work in Dornoch, there were at least eight young men, as promising in Christian character and in fitness for Church office as one could wish to see, most of whom are now in office as elders.

Let us pray and labour for the time when the Free Church and the Free Presbyterians shall again be one in the Lord’s hand. That congregation shall then indeed be beautiful and glorious.

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 George Macleod

Author: Rev. Kenneth MacDonald, Applecross
Source: Disruption Worthies of the Highlands , page 187

George Macleod

Mr Macleod was a native of the parish of Latheron and county of Caithness. He was born on the 10th day of June 1803. During the first period of his education he had no intention of qualifying himself for anything else than a life of secular employment. He entered into business in Edinburgh when very young, and I heard it said if he had continued in that line of life that he would have attained to a position in Edinburgh society which many regard as the height of their ambition. He was sure at least of a seat in the Town Council, a position for which he was naturally well qualified. But the Ruler of all events reserved him for a different kind of work, and in his good time he called him effectually to himself. When he was about twenty-eight years of age he was awakened to concern for his soul, and moved to change his life arrangements. Reading his Bible at family worship at home, he was stuck by the arrow of God’s word, and so deep was his conviction of sin, that for days and nights he could neither eat nor sleep. Then having found the Lord, he counted all things loss for him. He gave up his business at once, and resolved to study for the Christian ministry.

A change so marked, and a man of character so decided, could not fail to attract notice, and consequently he was employed as an agent by the Edinburgh City Mission during his college course. He was so full of life and so devoted to the Lord’s service that he could not be idle or rest from direct work even when preparing himself for future usefulness. His services in connection with the City Mission were highly appreciated and greatly blessed to the conversion of souls to God. Having finished the required course of study at the Edinburgh University, he was licensed by the Presbytery of Dunoon on the second Thursday of November 1839, and shortly thereafter he was ordained by the Presbytery of Dingwall, and inducted to the charge of the congregation at Maryburgh in that Presbytery. Here he was placed in the immediate neighbourhood of Dr Macdonald of Ferintosh, whose fame was in all the Churches. A man of ordinary ability would be in danger of sinking into absolute obscurity under the splendour of the doctor’s light. But Mr Macleod was not long settled when his power was felt in all the parishes around him. People flocked from all quarters to hear him, and the Maryburgh church was crowded from Sabbath to Sabbath with hundreds more than it could comfortably hold, the passages were literally crammed with people standing during service, and every conceivable sitting-place was occupied. There are some still living who can recall how their boyish fancy used to be tickled at the grotesque appearance of men and women sitting on book-boards and on front of the gallery. This state of things continued during his ministry at Maryburgh. It was a wonderful time. The Lord was evidently preparing minister and people for a great event. His name became a household word, and consequently when the crisis came the course he adopted was a powerful argument in favour of the good cause with many throughout the country. Mr Macleod was a member of Assembly in 1842, and a member of the Convocation. He was deputed by his party to visit the West Highlands with a view to prepare them for the Disruption. On this work he entered with all his heart and energy in due time. In April 1843 he visited Applecross, Shieldaig, Lochcarron, Plockton, Lochalsh, Kintail, Glenshiel, and Glenelg, in the Presbytery of Lochcarron; Kiltarlity, Glenurquhart, and Daviot, in the Presbytery of Inverness; Boleskine, Kilmonivaig, Kilmallie, Fort-William, and Fort-Augustus, in the Presbytery of Abertarff. All these congregations, with one or two exceptions, were under the reign of moderatism which could not tolerate the face of an evangelical minister. Nevertheless the people turned out with great readiness to hear the gospel and get information on those points that referred to their spiritual rights and liberties. To many of them this preaching tour was a prelude to great gospel privileges, and when the Disruption took place, it was to them as “the opening of the prison to them that are bound.”

Mr Macleod was in Edinburgh at the Disruption. On his return to Maryburgh, he and his congregation who were prepared for the event bade formal farewell to the Establishment, and left none of their number behind them. As might be expected he got a large share of the work entailed on the Church by the Disruption. During summer and autumn 1843, he was constantly engaged counselling and encouraging congregations who adhered to the Free Church, and who were then as sheep without a shepherd.

On the 29th September he crossed the Dithreabh Mor, on his way to Lochbroom, for the first time. The night was very dark, and he used to say that a Highland pony sent to meet him was the means of preserving his life on that occasion. There was no road or bridge, and neither he nor his guide could keep the path or find the fords. But the sagacious little animal being allowed his own way kept the track, carried him safely across the river Broom, which was greatly flooded, and brought him at last to the place of his destination. According to previous arrangement he preached in the open air on the first Sabbath of October, and on Monday he met the congregation and addressed them on the principles and position of the Free Church. By this he expected that his work there would be finished. But so strong a representation of the earnest desire of the people to hear the gospel was made to him that he was persuaded to continue preaching on Tuesday and Wednesday. The people, some of whom came from distant districts of the parish to the number of upwards of two thousand, remained all the time. It was evident that a great work had begun. There was great shaking among the bones.

About this time the Moderate party began to fill up the charges left by Free Church ministers. This occasioned great excitement in certain parishes in the east of Ross-shire; some of the people actually rebelled against the proceedings, and many were prepared to resist by might and lynch-law what they regarded as an encroachment on their spiritual rights. It seems ridiculous to us at this time of day that the services of Free Church ministers would be considered necessary to keep the peace under the circumstances, yet such was the case. Dr Gordon, from Edinburgh, and Dr Macfarlane, from Greenock, were sent north for the purpose, and Mr Macleod on his return from Lochbroom was requested to join them. He told me that he had actually to attend, along with the fiscal and other public officials outside the church in a certain parish, to allow the ceremony of induction to be carried on inside in peace. And I believe that his presence as a representative of the gospel did more to preserve order than the fiscal by his law or the constable by his baton. 

At the Glasgow Assembly, which met in October 1843, it was arranged that some ministers be loosed from their charges for a time to labour in districts of the country where the struggle was the sorest and the cause needed most help. Mr Macleod was then appointed to itinerate for six months in the Presbytery of Abernethy, Strathspey. He began his work there, and found it a cold climate physically and spiritually. The local clergy, with all the influence they could command, made a dead stand against him. He was refused a place for his horse in any of the public stables of the capital of Strathspey, and he could get no place for himself except in one of two private and humble dwellings. The bitterness of the Moderate party was so intense that the hotels were actually closed against him, and the very tents erected to shelter him when preaching in the open air were thrown down at night. Factors and parties of influence in the district used all means in their power to baffle him. But notwithstanding all this the good cause prevailed, and in a very short time he found himself preaching to large congregations of attentive and earnest and loyal Free Church people from all parts of Strathspey and Badenoch. When the Word of God took effect among the people they threw aside the bonds of their would-be spiritual guides, and adopted the principles of the Free Church. He made the far-famed knowe of Tulloch Gorm the centre of his Sabbath work, and, as was reported in the local papers at the time, his congregation there often numbered 4000 souls. On week days he preached at different stations at the rate of eighteen or nineteen sermons a-week. On a previous visit to Badenoch, which lasted only for a week, he addressed eight congregations according to arrangements made by Mr Shepherd of Kingussie, who was the only minister along the channel of the Spey from Loch Laggan downwards who left the Established Church. Those outdoor services were blessed to many in that county. I met some last summer in Badenoch who still remember them with pious emotion, and who date their own conversion to God from those days of power. 

 At the close of his six months’ work in Strathspey a call, signed by 1600, was addressed to him from a district of that county. But he promptly declined to entertain it, as a call from Lochbroom, signed by 2530, was before the Church courts. The Presbytery of Dingwall agreed to translate him, but an appeal to the General Assembly was taken by the Maryburgh congregation. This is not to be wondered at. It was like separating a father from his children. Many of them regarded him as their spiritual father, and the congregation owed its then prosperous state to his successful labours. In pleading the case before the Assembly they offered to give six months in the year of his service to the Church if the pastoral tie would not be broken. The Assembly however adhered to the judgment of the Presbytery, and he was translated accordingly with all convenient speed. He was inducted at Lochbroom on the 18th day of July 1844. The parish of Lochbroom presented a field of labour worthy of a man of herculean powers. The population is nearly 5000, scattered over a district of at least forty miles by thirty in extent, with a sea coast line of upwards of 200 miles. It is intersected by wide arms of the sea from the Atlantic. Here then Mr Macleod had full scope for the exercise of his fervent zeal, indomitable courage, and elastic frame. He made the village of Ullapool the centre point of his labours. Besides this he administered ordinances occasionally at five other stations. To three of these there was access only by boat. This mode of travelling, which is pleasent enough in fine weather, is very uncertain and often dangerous on that exposed coast. In going to some of those remote stations he generally left his own house at six o’clock in the morning, and did not get back till ten at night. By an unexpected gale of contrary wind he was sometimes four hours longer on the way than he calculated on. The people met at the appointed hour, and waited all the time in the open air, seeing the boat battling with the waves on its way towards them ; and when the minister arrived, drenched with spray and rain, he began   the service without losing time to change as much as a stocking. Returning home after preaching at one of those stations one day, he was forced by stress of weather to seek shelter on a bare rock in the sea, and pass a cold October night there without fire or food, and with very little to shelter him from the wind and rain. If he had not had an iron constitution he could not have stood the work so long. But, to his credit be it spoken, he continued it for twenty-two years, and was never known to complain till his health gave way under it. What was once his single charge is now divided into two congregations; and I may safely say it might have been divided into three, each of which would be large enough for any one man. Mr Macleod took a deep interest in the education of the young of his congregation. Besides the large school at Ullapool, he had five other schools in different parts of the parish. The erection of these school-buildings, together with that of his two churches and manse, added greatly to his labour, and cost him much trouble and anxiety. Those ministers who got their churches and manses ready for them, and who now get their schools supported by the ratepayers, can have no idea of the toil and trouble of the self-denying heroes who were the first heralds and pioneers of the Free Church in poor country parishes. The space allowed for this sketch will not admit of a detailed account of his work in the Church’s service. It was computed before his death that he travelled upwards of 9000 miles in open boats on public duty on the west coast. By appointment of Assembly in 1844, he went to Caithness and Sutherland, where the Free Church was sorely persecuted, and in three weeks’ time he visited and addressed seventeen congregations in the Presbyteries of Dornoch, Tongue, and Caithness. He was the first Free Church minister that visited the Island of Ronaldshay in Orkney. And in 1846 he officiated for six weeks in the floating church at Lochsunart, where he endured privations and suffering worthy of an apostle, sleeping at night alone in the cable-room of the strange craft.  May it not be said that he was “in journeyings often,” and “in perils in the sea”?

It would be superfluous in me to attempt a description of him as a preacher. His career is evidence of his popularity. Those who knew his ripe and accurate knowledge of the cardinal truths of Scripture, who witnessed his impressive manner, and who heard the thrilling tones of his sweet and powerful voice, will readily admit that he was a man in an age. His first sermon, which he preached in Milton Church, Glasgow, made an impression which indicated that he was a man of no ordinary power. The Rev. John Duncan, afterwards Dr Duncan of the New College, Edinburgh, was minister of the congregation at the time, and in a letter written by him to Dr Macdonald, Ferintosh, I find the following statement:- “Mr George Macleod, having been licensed by the Presbytery of Dunoon on Thursday last, preached to us in Milton Church on Sabbath forenoon; I never expected to hear, nor do I expect to hear again, such a first sermon. Considered as a piece of composition it was highly respectable, the language plain and good, the arrangement orderly, and the delivery marked by a firmness, pith, and animation which surprised me in the circumstances. The doctrine was scriptural, close, pointed, and practical, from the text, ‘The Son of man is come to seek and to save that which was lost.” Those who did not know him prior to 1861 can have no idea of what he was in his best days. He had an attack of illness then from which he never completely recovered. And though he was always welcomed by congregations, his friends felt that his wonted power was abated after that date. In his adherence to Free Church principles, however, he was quite firm and enthusiastic to the end. For these principles he suffered much and laboured abundantly, and he was apparently prepared to die for them if necessary. Expressions indicating his strong sense of their importance, and his intense conviction of their connection with loyalty to Christ, were among what was then supposed to be his death-bed utterances. Having thought himself dying, he called his son, and among other things he said, with great solemnity, “I do not regret the course I took in 1843. How could I go now to look Him in the face if I had denied Him then?”

To his younger brethren in the ministry he was very courteous. When he found it necessary to check any of them, he did it with fatherly affection. I never saw him attempt to snub or do anything calculated to hurt a brother’s feelings. He always evinced a stronger desire to raise others to the same level with himself than to keep a set of cringing worshippers at his feet. With a mind large enough for a bishop of the widest diocese, and fully conscious of his own position and power, he exemplified the true Presbyterian minister in all his intercourse with his brethren. Among his own people he was like the father of a large family. He was consulted by all on every subject that concerned them. And though his manner was very dignified, yet his loving disposition, and his readiness to accommodate himself to all circumstances, made him easy of approach to the humblest in the congregation. He was a true friend and a tower of strength to the whole parish. In autumn 1870 he was completely laid aside from work. Early in the following spring he went south, and reached his son‘s manse in Newport, Fife. There, after a protracted and painful illness, he died on the 2d day of May 1871, in the sixty-seventh year of his age and thirty-first of his ministry. “After he had served his own generation by the will of God, he fell asleep.”

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 Some Northern Fathers
I. George Macleod of Lochbroom

Author: J. M. [perhaps Principal John Macleod]
Source: The Monthly Record of the Free Church of Scotland, 1929, page 19-20

Among the Disruption worthies of the North few of the younger men were so prominent as Macleod of Maryburgh. He was the first minister of that charge, which was one of the new churches that sprung up out of Dr Chalmers‘ Pre-Disruption Church Extension Scheme. The population of Scotland had in many parts, especially in the commercial and industrial districts, increased so much that the Church provision fell far short of meeting its needs. There were Chapels of Ease, it is true, and new Parliamentary Churches, not to speak of the various branches of the Secessions. But these did not by any means come up to the requirements of the situation; for many of the people had lapsed or were lapsing from any Church connection, and the problem of home heathenism was becoming acute. An unevangelical and largely uninstructed working-class was growing up, and it threatened to be not only unChristian, but anti-Christian. It was to meet such a situation that Chalmers, with his full energy, launched his Church Extension Scheme. He met with a large measure of success and a ready response from those that shared his evangelical convictions. Among them were the ladies of the Seaforth family, who were the representatives of “Mackenzie, High Chief of Kintail.” It was one of the more agreeable ironies of history that those last representatives of an old Jacobite family should espouse the cause of the Evangel that had not commended itself to their forebears. Lady Hood, who presided at Brahan with her like-minded sisters, took a hearty interest in the evangelising of the great domain that they inherited. They did much to help forward the work of the Gospel in Lewis, which, until after the Disruption, was still part of the Seaforth estates. And in furthering the Church Extension Scheme, they got a new quoad sacra parish of Maryburgh set up. When this new church was opened George Macleod was its first minister.

I
At the date of his ordination Mr Macleod was no longer in the years of early manhood; he was already drawing near the end of his thirties. He was born in 1803 at Ramscraigs, near Dunbeath, in the parish of Latheron in Caithness. His father, Neil Macleod, belonged to the West, which, in the somewhat loose and elastic geographical language of old Caithness, might mean any place from Lochbroom to Cape Wrath, and even to Farr. Neil was a doughty champion with the cudgel when there was any fighting going at the great Dunbeath Market. Physically he was a very powerful man, and he was not one to be trifled with. In these respects his son was like him he was one of the best built tall men of his day, and was a very handsome figure, and in his nature there was a strong, masterful strain. When he was settled minister of Maryburgh his strong will sometimes brought him into conflict with the Lady of the Manor who also had a will of her own. One of these little tiffs took place, and it was time that a truce should be called. It happened that her ladyship was laid up with an attack of gout. This gave her pastor an opportunity to call upon her. When he did so, he was warmly welcomed. “Oh! Mr Macleod,” said the patient, “have you ever suffered from gout?” “No, my Lady,” was his answer, “I was never rich enough to have gout.”

George Macleod had gone, as a young man, to Edinburgh to push his way. There he was prospering as a licensed victualler. But one day as he was rolling a cask of whisky into his cellar two zealous students were passing by. One of them said to be Peter Maclean – the eminent evangelist of Cape Breton and Free Church minister of Stornoway – spoke out, “Is it known how many souls that hogshead will send to hell before it is done?” This went as an arrow to Mr Macleod’s heart, and it was not long until he quitted his business. After a time of sharp conviction of sin and misery when he came to the comfort of the Gospel, he began to study for the ministry. It was in his native district that he was first called upon to pray in public. The strong man had bowed down; and in after years he told how he shook on his feet as he turned his face to the wall of the meeting-house on this occasion. When he was licensed to preach the Gospel he delivered his first sermon in the Milton Church, Glasgow. Dr Duncan, then the minister of the church was one of his hearers, and his comment was that such a first sermon he never heard.

From the very beginning of his ministry George Macleod was a man of mark, and though in the parishes about Maryburgh there were eminent preachers, he filled the new church. But his ministry there was not of long duration. The Disruption came, and he was soon called to the Free Church congregation of Lochbroom, where he was to labour for the rest of his days. Such was the impression made by him in his first charge, that though he came to be well known as Mr Macleod of Lochbroom, he was also known to the end, almost as well, by the name of Macleod, Maryburgh.

Before he was settled in Lochbroom he laboured much in the cause of the Free Church in Strathspey. Indeed he was called by 1600 people to Grantown. They were not prepared to accept Estate dictation as the guide of their consciences. The days were warlike; and a spirit was awakened in defence of the elementary rights of man that did not rest until the feudal tyranny that was largely exercised by factors was broken. Mr Macleod did not see his way to accept the Call to Strathspey, but to the last he had a warm place in his heart for Strathspey. and there were few to whom the Evangelicals of that region were so knit as to him. He was destined to labour in a more remote and isolated, yet in a much more extensive sphere.

II
At the Disruption Dr Ross of Lochbroom, who was on his death-bed, intimated his adherence to the Free Church. In a few weeks he passed away, and his vast parish and huge congregation looked out for a successor. Through the good offices of Rev. John Macrae of Knockbain, they found a successor in the popular and strenuous minister of Maryburgh. The Call was signed by over 2500. Mr Macleod was duly settled, and under his direction church, manse, and schoolhouse were erected in Ullapool, which place, now that the population had been evicted from its original seat in Strathmore and its neighbourhood, had become the centre of the parish. Ullapool in those days was the headquarters of the fishing industry of the north-west coast, and it became the radiating centre of the ministerial activities of its new minister, and the attractive centre to which great congregations and Communion gatherings were drawn. In his time the Free Church congregation of Lochbroom was easily the premier congregation of the Western Highlands; and Mr Macleod did not spare himself in labouring throughout its wide bounds. Even at this time of day it is not easy to work such a far-flung parish. In those days it was much harder. To overtake the task the minister had to do much of his work on the sea, just as his scattered people had to make frequent use of their boats if they would wait upon his preaching. As a boatman Mr Macleod was more daring than expert. He had, however, faithful people who were more careful for his life than he was himself, and more careful for his life than they were for their own.

In working his parish Mr Macleod studied the convenience of his hearers more than his own comfort. When the weather was at all likely to be favourable he arranged to have occasional services in very lonely places on the shores of Lochbroom but places that were of easier access for those who were far from church than the church itself was. One of these services was held at Duncana, almost under the shelter of the wild Coigach Rock. This was shortly after he went to Lochbroom. For those who travelled by sea this was quite an accessible place, though it is far from the haunts of men. Among his hearers was the veteran of pre-Disruption days, John Maclean (Ian Mac-Corrachie), from Strath Kannaird, who heard him for the first, and perhaps for the last time. His neighbours were keen to get Ian MacCorrachie’s opinion of the new minister, and they got it in brief compass: “A man that dwells in the Truth and in whom the Truth dwells” (“Duine a ta a chomhnuidh anns an fhirinn agus an fhirinn a chomhnuidh ann“). On another occasion he held his service near Gruinard, on the confines of his parish. This was a rallying place for boats from a wide stretch of coast. From this service Mr Macleod did not get home scatheless. He was driven to seek the shelter of Eilean nan Each, off the shores of Coigach, and there he and his crew had to remain throughout the whole night of storm. His kind and loyal crew insisted on sheltering him, heated as he was with preaching, while they did not spare themselves. They did their best, but Mr Macleod’s health was never again what it had been before, after this night of exposure. His magnificent physique had carried him through much, but the hardships of that night proved too much even for his frame.

III
Never did any of the old chiefs of the Cromarty family, or any other, wield such sway over the heart of Lochbroom as George Macleod did; and yet he was not without his own experience of opposition. This, with his imperious spirit, did not make for peace. But the opposition did not seriously undermine the loyalty of his flock of 5000. What gatherings used to be in his large church at Ullapool, especially at Communion seasons! The clachan of Lochbroom had been a great rallying centre in earlier days, but throughout the ministry of Mr Macleod those earlier days were eclipsed. On such occasions he would have with him such brethren as his clansman, Mr Alexander Macleod of Rogart, his co-presbyter, Mr Duncan Matheson of Gairloch, and his intimate and yoke-fellow in the Gospel, Francis Macbean of Fort Augustus. Before he died in 1871, his beloved Free Church was torn with dissension over a Union policy, against which he set his face. There were few more resolute opponents than he of that policy, which he looked upon as a betrayal of the witness of the Reformed Church of Scotland. And it is one of the ironies of life that the church which was his Cathedral, and beside which his dust is laid, was handed over to the party whose predecessors had met with his warmest opposition.

Like one of the prophets of old, his words were not allowed to fall to the ground, and many who came as mere hearers had their heart secrets brought to light as he preached, and were constrained to acknowledge that God was among His people of a truth. In these Laodicean days of ours men would hardly believe what distances folk travelled to wait upon his preaching. Indeed, one of his not infrequent hearers came from Durness, near Cape Wrath. Donald Sutherland, to do this, would have to leave home on Friday, and could not be back before Tuesday. During the post-Disruption days, when the awakening of Skye was in process, there was no helper that Mr Roderick Macleod found more efficient or acceptable than his clansman from Lochbroom. The generation that remembers these worthies of the Disruption era has almost passed away; but it is right that their memory should not be allowed to perish.

Mr Macleod in his strenuous way was a vigorous educational reformer. He was bent on having his people as well educated as he could get them to be. So he got schools set up throughout his wide parish. Among the school masters that he had labouring among his people was John Macrae from Letterfearn, whose memory is still fragrant in Skye as minister of Duirinish. Mr Macrae’s brother Duncan who use to go from his native Glenshiel to the Lochbroom Communion, was once at Altandu in Coigach, visiting John. Duncan happened to be in the same boat with Mr Macleod who recognised him as a stranger. “What,” asked the minister, “is your name?” “They call me Black Duncan,” was the answer, “Ah, if you only knew how black,” said the minister. “Little good would that do me,” said Duncan, “If I did not know something better.” Mr Macleod found in Duncan one who not only knew something of the law but prized the Gospel. The story is told of Duncan as a hearer, that on one of the occasions when he attended the Communion services at Ullapool he spent each night of the Communion from Thursday to Monday in lively prayer under a bridge near Braes – so rich was his fellowship with the Hearer of Prayer. During the days he felt sleep troubling him for only few moments altogether. But when he got home to Glenshiel tired nature asserted its rights, and he slept without waking for two and
a half days on end.

In the Disruption Worthies of the Highlands there is a sketch of Mr. Macleod, and a photograph which lets us see the strong and manly face of one who was pre-eminently a good minister of Jesus Christ. With all his strength of mind he would have his times of despondency, for he did not see the fruit of his ministry that he desired. In one of these fits he was in the company of one of his Coigach elders, Dugald Matheson of Tanera. The strong man needed to be comforted, and his friend rebuked him for giving way to despondency. It might be, he said, and he might well say it, that much of the seed that he was sowing was destined to spring up and bear fruit after he himself was gathered to his fathers. There are faces that will brighten up and eyes that will become soft when the name of this great man of God is mentioned. He left his mark on his own generation, and that mark has outlived the generation that knew him.

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 Some Northern Fathers
A Remote Country Pastor –
Mr Norman Macleod of North Uist

Author: [perhaps Principal John Macleod]
Source: The Monthly Record of the Free Church of Scotland,February, 1932, pages 34-36

 
The names of many of our Disruption ministers are still remembered far beyond the sphere of their life-work. There were others of them, however, who ran a godly race and either from the isolation of the post that they held, or from their retiring character, or from their lack of those popular or showy gifts that win for a man a place in the mouth of his fellows, their names are not widely known. The poet could speak of flowers that are born to blush unseen. Yet these men had their own nook in life, and within their own circle their name is treasured. The esteem in which they are held need not be an uncritical one. They need not be credited with all the virtues and with freedom from flaws. Those that cherish their memory most may perhaps see reason to differ from the judgment that they formed of public situations. Yet when a balance is struck and every adverse abatement is made, they hold securely a warm corner in the heart of those that know about their life and work. One of the less well-known of a past generation is the subject of this sketch. He was the Reverend Norman Macleod of North Uist.

Mr Macleod was a native of Skye and belonged to a family that has given many well known names to the Scottish ministry. They were a robust stock with handsome figures and attractive geniality of disposition, and they won a place for themselves. His father was the representative of this race who in his generation held the old home. He was the smith of Swordale, near Dunvegan. Two of his first cousins were among the leading Moderate ministers of Gaeldom. The son of one of them was Queen Victoria’s favourite chaplain in Scotland. These relations of his were thus prominent representatives of a strain of Church life very different from that which he favoured. But the Macleod ministerial race to which he belonged had worthy, even outstanding, men among them. His father’s cousin was the eminent Dr Alexander Macleod, the Reformed Presbyterian minister of New York, who was one of the brightest Evangelical luminaries of his age in the Western Hemisphere. It was not to every man that it was given to have the chance of refusing to become President of Princeton. Yet Dr Alexander Macleod had the offer of this high honour and put it from him. There was another of the race who was almost equally eminent among the Disruption worthies of the Highlands, Mr Roderick Macleod of Bracadale and Snizort, who was often spoken of as the Bishop of Skye, He was a first cousin of the first Free Church minister of North Uist.

Mr Norman Macleod, in the days of his early ministry, worked among the Gaelic exiles from Arran who were congregated on the Ayrshire seaboard at Saltcoats, and while he laboured in this field he won a high place in the esteem of his hearers. There is still extant a Gaelic lament that bears witness to this. It was the work of one of his congregation at Saltcoats, and was called forth by his removal from Ayrshire to Trumisgarry in North Uist in pre-Disruption days. The authoress of this lament was an aunt of James Brown of the Craw, who was so well known in Arran as a godly elder and whose memory is yet green. This aunt of Mr Brown held Mr Macleod in the highest esteem, and poured out her sorrow in this lament when he was called away from being her pastor. The work and witness of his youth in the Gospel thus did not pass without appreciation that bridges almost a century.

When Mr Macleod went to North Uist he did not go as parish minister. His charge was Trumisgarry, which in pre-Disruption days was one of the new Quoad Sacra erections. Here when the Ten Years’ Conflict came to an end he had the opportunity of showing his mettle. He took a lively interest in the Church’s struggle, for he held convictions that were compelling in their character. So when the day of testing and crisis came he was not found wanting There were many connections that would have overborne his integrity if they had their way. There were family connections, of which we have already spoken. The influence of his kinsfolk by marriage told in the same direction. And from the feudal management and magnates of North Uist in those days he did not need to look for any favour. Nor did he meet with it. When he left his manse at Trumisgarry, the only home that he could find was far away from the seat of his charge in the island of Grimisay. But what was his trial was Grimisay’s gain, for there were few parts of the insular parish of North Uist that became more deeply imbued with Evangelical sentiment than this remote island where the first Free Church minister found a home.

The Evangelical Revival which prepared the way for the Disruption in Lewis and Skye and Harris had not affected Uist as it had done its neighbour islands. But the beginning had taken place before Mr Macleod began his labours at Trumisgarry. Uist tradition still treasures the memory of the labours of Finlay Munro and his blind friend Angus MacCuish. Their work and witness had not been in vain. In the early years of the Free Church the godly Alexander Macintyre of Sunart spent some time in Uist, with Paible as his headquarters. Wherever he went the power of the Lord seemed to attend his preaching, and along with Grimisay the district about Paible enjoyed most of the showers of blessing of those days. One of Mr Macintyre’s converts at that time was the saintly Donald Macdonald of Shieldaig. As the result of those awakenings the community of North Uist experienced a remarkable change of outlook and tone.

Uist had now its own crop of godly elders, alike on its mainland and in its contiguous islands – Heisker, Boreray, and others. One of the most striking of these Christian men was Roderick Morrison, who was one of Finlay Munro’s converts. In early life Roderick spent some years in France and could speak French fluently. As one who had seen something of the world he had a wide acquaintance with the state of the Evangelical cause. He was a man of strong will and marked individuality, one that would take his own course whatever others might choose to do. Sixty years ago he was not satisfied with how things were shaping in connection with the Union policy of the Leaders of the Free Church; and as his minister sympathised with that policy, Roderick withdrew from Church attendance, and for a considerable time, with the congregation of North Uist largely supporting him, he held outside independent services. On one occasion at a Communion time he had as his guest his bosom friend, Norman Paterson, from Strond in Harris. When Norman reached the place where the noonday service was held Roderick stayed at home, as he was displeased with some of the public actings of the Church. Friends asked Norman how his host was not with him. They got the pithy answer, that Roderick was seeking on earth what he would never get until he reached heaven – a perfect Church.

Mr Norman Macleod lived until 1881. Thus he saw the working of the Educational Settlement of 1872 for about a decade. When he first visited one of the Board Schools and found that, though the Bible was taught in it according to time-table, it was dethroned from its old place of pre-eminence, the change so affected the good old man that he burst into tears. He had voted for the men who had sacrificed the old Scottish order, and when he saw the beginnings of the new order his heart was sore. North Uist folk over the world cherish the memory of one who spent such a long ministerial life among them, and bear witness in their conscience that though he attained not to the first three, he was one of the Church’s worthies. For a succession of years, though they did not see eye to eye on public questions, he used to have the Free Church ministers, one after the other, of his native
parish of Duirinish as his chief helpers at his Communion services in Creag Hasdain; and the memory of those visits of Alexander Macleod and John Macrae has not yet become a thing of the past in North Uist.

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 Roderick McLeod

Author: Rev. John S. Macphail, Kilmuir, Skye
Source: Disruption Worthies: A Memorial of 1843, page 383; also Disruption Worthies of the Highlands , page 23

Roderick McLeod

At the time of this crisis in Mr McLeod’s history, there lived in his neighbourhood a remarkable man in humble circumstances whose enlightened views and ripe Christian experience were the means of keeping and strengthening him in the way of the Lord. This man was blind Donald Munro, a name revered in Skye only second to that of Mr McLeod himself. When the history of living religion in Skye shall be written, one of its most interesting chapters will be the life and labours of this man of God. He was converted through hearing a sermon preached by Mr Farquharson, an itinerant preacher sent to Skye by the Messrs Haldane; and soon it became evident that God had raised him up to be a faithful and much-acknowledged labourer in His vineyard. He had rare mental gifts, and was mighty in the Scriptures. His meetings for prayer and exhortation were abundant, and the power of the Lord was present in those humble gatherings at the river side in Snizort.

Along with the great spiritual change in the minister, there was seen a very striking change in the Mission House of Lynedale. The preaching was new. The services were multiplied. Meetings were held on week days as well as Sabbaths. Soon these meetings became crowded, for the people flocked to them from the surrounding districts, and many who afterwards became eminent Christians dated their first deep impressions from the earnest services of that time.

When the parish of Bracadale became vacant by the death of Mr Shaw, a minister of eminent piety, Mr McLeod was presented to the living, and inducted into that charge in 1823. He used to remark that it was with his sword and his bow that he gained this preferment, referring to the manner in which he formerly commended himself to his patron, by excelling in the use of the gun and in other amusements.

His ministry in Bracadale extended over fifteen years. Here he had trials, but he had also great encouragement in his work. His church was crowded from Sabbath to Sabbath with eager hearers. Not only his own parishioners, but many from the surrounding parishes resorted to his ministry. Bracadale became famous as the birthplace of souls, and the memories still floating in the island of the success that attended Mr McLeod’s labours there would fill a volume.

His views of the sacraments caused him to delay in some cases the administration of baptism, and this unusual strictness gave rise to complaints and appeals to the Presbytery of Skye. His Presbytery had no sympathy with him or his views, and endeavoured to force him into compliance with their own laxer notions. But standing, as he believed he did, on the firm foundation of God’s truth, Mr McLeod was not the man to be moved from his strong convictions. And so his refusing baptism to a parishioner came up before the General Assembly of 1824 by reference from the Presbytery.

At three different Assemblies Mr McLeod’s case was under discussion in one form or another. His Presbytery treated him with the utmost harshness, and gave him no rest. They harassed him, at first with threats, then by suspending him from the functions of the ministry for a year, and finally they proceeded against him by libel with the view of deposing him from the ministry. It was to this treatment that Mr (afterwards Lord) Cockburn, who was Mr McLeod’s counsel, referred, when, in an eloquent speech before the Assembly, he lashed the Presbytery of Skye with his powers of ridicule, describing them as a troop of foxhunters, who had not much to occupy them, and who agreed to keep a bagged fox, at which they might have a run when they wanted a hunt. The case was ultimately disposed of in 1827, when the Assembly appointed a committee of its most respected members to make full investigation, and to report to the House. This committee vindicated Mr McLeod, and recommended that the suspension be removed, and the libel be rejected. The Assembly unanimously adopted their committee’s report, and Mr McLeod was set free, and returned to his home and his flock a happy man.

Mr McLeod continued his ministry in Bracadale till the year 1838, when, on a vacancy occurring in the parish of Snizort, the people petitioned the Home Office, praying that Mr McLeod should be presented to the charge. The application was successful, and he was accordingly translated to Snizort. It was now the period of the “Ten Years’ Conflict,” and into that movement Mr McLeod threw himself with all the ardour of his heart. His sympathies were entirely on the side of the spiritual independence of the Church, and the spiritual rights and privileges of the Christian people. The circumstances of the time called for a large amount of extra-parochial duties, and perhaps no man passed through more bodily toil and privation in the service of the Church than Mr McLeod did on to 1843. But however excessive his labours may have been before, it was the Disruption in that year that laid on him a burden which demanded all the mental vigour and elasticity, and all the physical strength, with which the Lord had endowed him. The Island of Skye, containing eight ministerial charges, with a population of 20,000 souls, was the field he was called to occupy, and he held it for years single-handed. Of his brethren in the island, none stood by him when the day of trial came, except one who was called to another charge a few months after the Disruption. But it was not only Skye which he had to hold for the Free Church. That portion of the Long Island which extends from Harris to Barra Head, with its population of 16,000 or more, and with only one minister who joined the Free Church, was added to the Presbytery of Skye, and demanded a large share of Mr McLeod’s thoughts and labours. He did not, however, shrink from the work, but courageously and cheerfully set his face to the duties before him. His labours for some years after the Disruption were not exceeded by those of any minister in the Free Church. It was no uncommon thing with him in those years to preach to congregations on the hillside in the midst of a snow-storm; and although he felt no injurious effects at the time, privations and continuous exertions, which were far beyond what any ordinary human strength could bear, left their mark upon him. But in the midst of it all no one ever found him desponding. He was always cheerful, and often even playful. By degrees relief came to him, and his labours were lightened. One after another of the island charges was filled up; and before his removal he saw the whole island supplied with ministers, from Rhu Hunish to the Point of Sleat.

Mr McLeod was married to Miss Anne McDonald, of Skeabost, in whom he found a partner who sympathised with him in all his labours, and who strengthened him in his various trials. They had a family of thirteen children; and before it pleased the Lord to visit them with bereavements, the well-ordered and happy household greatly impressed many a visitor to the manse. But one after another they were taken away, until at the time of his own removal, only four remained. His bearing in connection with those family sorrows was very remarkable. He meekly and quietly took all from a Father’s hand.

Mr McLeod continued in robust health till he neared the threescore years and ten. But at length the iron frame began to yield. In the year 1864 he had an illness which confined him to the house for several weeks; but he rallied again, and continued to labour with unabated zeal for some years longer. It may be said of him that he fell in the field; for it was on returning from South Uist, after several days of preaching, that his last illness came on. He performed this long journey in an open boat, where there was neither shelter nor comfort. Exposure to storm and wet, for a night and a day, left evil effects behind, and his strength rapidly forsook him. The end was like a summer sunset, calm and tranquil. There was no ecstacy, and there was no fear; and without a struggle he passed away.

It is difficult now to credit the “gross darkness” that covered the population of Skye at the commencement of this century. But a reformation period arrived. A tide of religious feeling set in through the island, and the trusted leader of the movement was Roderick McLeod. No one acquainted with the religious history of Skye can doubt that he was an instrument specially raised up by God to guide and mould the revived spiritual life of the people at that time. But Mr McLeod was no mere revivalist. He was a man of wide sympathies, who took a deep and intelligent interest in all matters civil and ecclesiastical. In ecclesiastical questions he was always in harmony with the great leaders of the Church. This was true, not only previous to the Disruption, but since that event. When there was an agitation on the subject of Church Unions in the colonies, he strongly advocated the side of union. And when the question of union among the unestablished churches of our own country came on, he entered into it most cordially. It was characteristic of him that, when once he took up a position, he was not to be moved from it. And so, on the subject of union, having made up his mind, he never wavered to his dying day in giving it his earnest support.

Those who had the privilege of intimate acquaintance with him found him a man of very warm affections, a most congenial companion, and a confiding and steadfast friend, who could be relied on in any emergency. Among his younger brethren, instead of seeking to lord it over them, he often made them feel ashamed by refusing to take the place that they thought belonged to him of right. In their manses none was a greater favourite with the little children. Such a man could not fail to be beloved by the people of his native island, and his sufferings for righteousness’ sake gave him a place in their hearts that no other man has ever had. It will be indeed a degenerate race of Skyemen that will cease to cherish with reverence and love the memory,of Mr Roderick McLeod.

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 Rev. Duncan Macnab

Author: Rev. J. T. McLean, North Bute
Source: Disruption Worthies of the Highlands , page 177

Duncan MacNab

On completing his theological course, he was licensed to preach the gospel by the Presbytery of Inverary in the year 1830. From that time to 1835 he was very much a wandering probationer, having no fixed work. It does seem strange that one who afterwards attained to such eminence as a preacher, both in English and Gaelic, was not successful in getting a charge. But though singular, it is not without a parallel. After being licensed, he occasionally preached in the Established Church of Lochgilphead, of which the Rev. Peter McKichan was minister. Though his appearances in the pulpit from the very first excited admiration, it was not till the year 1835 he got permanent work; and even then only an assistantship. In that year he was chosen as assistant to the late Dr Macintosh Mackay of Dunoon. As Dunoon was a united parish, a place of much importance, he had now scope for the exercise of his talents and gifts in both languages; and from the way in which he did his work both in and out of the pulpit, he endeared himself not only to the resident population, but also to those who frequented it during the summer and autumn months.

When in Dunoon, his friends who knew his abilities and resources persuaded him to stand as candidate for the office of assistant and successor to the Rev. Donald [or Daniel] Kelly, minister of the second charge of the parish of Campbeltown. He stood, but was unsuccessful. Patronage stood in the way. The successful candidate was the Rev. Duncan Maclean, who died minister of the Free Church at Callander. Some two years later, Mr Maclean being presented to the parish of Kilmodan, in Cowal, Mr Macnab was, singular to say, appointed assistant and successor to the minister of the second or Lowland charge.

Campbeltown was then a collegiate charge. There were two churches a little distance from each other. The one was called the first or Highland charge; the other, the second or Lowland. In the former at that time only Gaelic was preached, in the other English. The two ministers had to preach in both alternately. In this way, although Mr Macnab was nominally minister of the Lowland charge, he had to preach regularly once every Sabbath to the Highlanders. The parish of Campbeltown was wide and thickly peopled, and entailed on one much physical effort as well as mental energy; and though dissent was not a thing unknown, there being in it at that time a large and influential congregation in connection with the United Presbyterian Church, yet the Church of Scotland was greatly in the majority.

His predecessors had been men of note. It is not every place that can boast of men like Dr John Smith, perhaps the first of Celtic scholars; like Dr Norman Macleod, than whom none could speak the language of the Gael so purely and feelingly (and who did much for his countrymen); and Dr Macnaughton, latterly of Lesmahagow, a good divine and admirable preacher. It was not an easy task to fill the place of these men, yet he was not long in the parish when he was as popular as any of them. So faithfully did he discharge the duties of his high and sacred office, and so much esteemed was he by the parishioners that, on the death of the Rev. Donald Smith, he was presented by the Duke of Argyll to the first or Highland charge.

He was not long in Campbeltown when he had to take up a position regarding questions that were then agitating the Church of Scotland. The “ten years’ conflict” was hastening to a close. It already looked as if a disruption was inevitable. Repeated attempts were made to adjust the differences between the Church and State, but in vain. The Non-intrusionists, the representatives of evangelical religion, of vital godliness, did what they could to prevent another breach in the Church; but neither the Intrusionists, the Moderate party, nor the Tory Government of that day would pay the least attention to their remonstrances and petitions. The civil power continued to invade the province peculiar to the Church, and matters assumed such a shape and magnitude that it was impossible for one to be any longer neutral. The bare idea of a disruption is a painful one; and so it was to those noble ministers and elders who, when the crisis and crash came, were equal to the occasion. To none was the idea of a disruption more painful than to Mr Macnab. He had a peculiar veneration for what was ancient. He was ardently attached to the historic Church of Scotland – the Church of Knox and Melville, Henderson and Halliburton, Gillespie and Bruce. Her very stones were dear to him, and he would do his very utmost to preserve her entire. Yet much as he loved her, and firmly as he believed that there should be a friendly alliance between Church and State, he was not prepared to maintain that connection if thereby the Church’s independence or spiritual freedom was to be sacrificed. He would rather see the tie severed than Cæsar ruling in the house of Christ.

When the day came in which he must decide whether to remain in or go out of a Church that was Erastian to the very core, he did not, like some who talked very loudly, and whose sympathies had been with the evangelical party, prove false and faithless. He went out; and he did not go alone. The other minister, the Rev. Hector Macneill, and who still survives, left church and manse, home and living; and neither of them ever regretted the solemn step they then took. Mr Macnab was not a member of the Assembly of 1843. On the Sabbath prior to the Disruption a scene was witnessed in the Gaelic Church of Campbeltown which made a deep impression on many present. After having finished his sermon, Mr Macnab, evidently realising the solemnity of the hour, and labouring under profound emotion, told the immense congregation that the crisis had come, and that they must now decide what to do. As this was the last time he would occupy this pulpit, and the last time he hoped many of them would occupy these pews, he wished them to stand when singing their parting song of praise. 

 The whole congregation stood, and so much moved were many of them that they could scarcely sing. The benediction having been pronounced, they rose, took their Bibles and psalm-books with them, and left the church never to return. It was hard to leave the old church, the scene of one’s labour; but the consciousness that one was doing what was right helped to lessen the feeling. Those who quitted the Erastian Church of Scotland in 1843 might have been martyrs, alas! many of them were; but they were not “martyrs by mistake.” They suffered at the hands of the Tory Government of the day, and also at the hands of Tory lairds and proprietors; but they suffered not in their conscience. They had what is far better than the smiles of the rich and the applause of the great, the testimony of a good conscience. Both the ministers of Campbeltown went out in 1843 with by far the greater portion of the people. Few of the office-bearers remained in. The people, more especially the Highlanders, followed their spiritual instructors. Some might have done so out of attachment to them, but most from principle, because they knew the questions at issue. In few places in the west was, and still is, the Free Church stronger numerically than in Campbeltown; and in few places are the people more firmly attached to her distinctive principles. This we attribute mainly to the fact, that Mr Macnab was in the habit of expounding her principles, and that with consummate power and eloquence. Though he had no doubts as to how he should act when the crisis actually came, yet he could not say how many of the people would rally around him. And in this he did not stand alone. He was afraid that some of the people might prove false. His fears were groundless. The people stood true. After leaving the old church, the question was, Where are we to worship now? There was no place in the town that could, even by dint of crowding, hold the one half of them. From May till the end of October they worshipped in the open air. During that time, though the sky was often over-cast, the weather was such that they were able to worship in comfort. About  the end of October two churches, plain but substantial and comfortable edifices, were opened. The one, the Gaelic, could easily accommodate 1200, and was full; the other, the English, was seated for 800. These two churches were pulled down in 1867, only however to be replaced by others which, for size, architectural beauty, and massiveness, will bear a very favourable comparison with the finest church in the west of Scotland.

Mr Macnab’s energies were severely tested and tried at this time. Not only had he to organise congregations, and erect schools in his own parish, but elsewhere. Occupying such an important position, and being already known not merely as an eloquent preacher, but also as one who had the power of organisation in a very high degree, his services were eagerly asked in many places beyond the limits of his own parish and presbytery, and these services were very cheerfully granted. Mr Macnab took a deep interest in education. He was strongly of the opinion that the Free Church should look after and superintend the education of her youth. Being of this opinion he lost no time in erecting schools in the parish, and these schools proved a great boon to the place. From them have gone forth men, not a few of whom now occupy important spheres in the Church. The amount of work done by Mr Macnab at and after the Disruption was great, and its effects are still manifest. He laboured faithfully and unweariedly in Campbeltown in connection with the Free Church for the period of thirteen years, and his labours were greatly owned and blessed.

Whilst he occupied a very important place in the Church, it was thought by some that he might now be more useful elsewhere. Renfield Free Church, Glasgow, being vacant by the resignation of the Rev. John Bonar, the congregation directed their attention to Mr Macnab. They detected in him rare intellectual power, what we may call sanctified genius. They gave him a unanimous call. Whatever his feelings were, his judgment led him to accept it. But though he was thoroughly decided in his own mind, though he saw the path of duty clearly, yet the Presbytery, fully alive to the importance of retaining him in his present sphere, unanimously refused to translate him. The Commissioners from Glasgow appealed to the Synod of Argyll, when the Presbytery’s decision was reversed, and the translation agreed to. In December 1856 he was translated to Glasgow.

When he began work in Glasgow he laboured under several disadvantages. The congregation had to worship for some time in the Merchant’s Hall until their new church, which was in course of erection, was ready for being opened. This itself was a serious disadvantage. But another, and a still more serious one was, that he had done little more than enter on his work when his health gave way. But notwithstanding these obstacles his congregation steadily increased, and clung to him with the utmost tenacity and fondness. By his own people he was much loved, and they gave substantial proof of it to himself when alive, and to his family when he was taken from them. To lessen his work and prolong if that were possible his life, they gave him a succession of assistants, but the aid so cheerfully given had not the desired effect. His complaint grew worse. It became evident to every one that the disease was making sure and rapid progress, assuming an alarming and hopeless aspect. It was thought that he might linger for a while, but even this hope was doomed to disappointment. His death, though not unexpected, came with terrible suddenness. Having gone to London to see what change of climate and society might do, he was taken alarmingly ill in his brother- in-law’s house. Everything that could be done was done, but in vain. The solemn hour had come. Death had laid its cold hand on that seemingly strong frame. Surrounded by loving ones he fell asleep – passed from the Church militant to the Church triumphant on the 12th of June 1863. Death did not take him by surprise. It was an event for which he had been looking for years. When it came he was ready. We have not been able to ascertain when Mr Macnab underwent a saving change; but this we will say, that one could not be long in his company without being impressed with the belief that you were with one who lived near to the Lord. He was a good as well as a great man.

Having thus briefly sketched his life, we shall now with as much brevity as possible sum up his character. We might look at him under a variety of aspects – as a man, a Christian, a scholar, a divine, a preacher, and an ecclesiastic. He was a man of broad sympathies, of large loving heart, kind, genial, generous. He was one whom you could not but love. He was the poor man’s friend, the rich man’s counsellor. His generosity was excessive, and some were low enough to turn it to their own account. His charity was unbounded. He was never known to turn away the poor empty from his door. He has more than once pinched himself to relieve others. He was a kingly man, noble by nature, one of wide sympathies and high principle, who would scorn to do anything that was base, mean, despicable; and grace made him nobler; elevated, beautified, and sanctified his powers, and led him to consecrate them all to the service of Christ. He was a true Christian. His Christianity appeared in his life and character. He was not much given to speaking about himself. His piety was not showy, superficial, demonstrative; but quiet, unpretending, real. The currents of his religious life ran deep and broad, like a river which, because of its fulness, makes but little noise. As a scholar and scientific man he stood high. In his youth he had the advantage of being taught by one who was a good classical scholar, and who imbued him with a taste for the languages of ancient Greece and Rome; but high as were his classical attainments, it was as a scientific man he was best known. There were few men in the Free Church who possessed his scientific knowledge. He was quite at home in the higher mathematics and astronomy. So thoroughly had he mastered these and cognate branches of science, that he has often, as a literary recreation, taken up and read Newton’s Principia. This knowledge he brought into the service of Christ. Some of his finest pulpit illustrations were taken from the science of astronomy. He could shew how science is but the hand-maid of revelation, how the works and word of God mutually illustrate each other. He was asked to write a treatise on science and theology, and we know of few who were better fitted for the task; but owing to his extreme modesty he declined. This we regard as a loss; for, lavishly endowed by nature, and possessing an extensive and intimate knowledge of natural science, he would have shewn, with great power of argument and wealth of illustration, that revelation has nothing to fear from true science, that science, when properly interpreted, so far from contradicting, only confirms the teaching of revelation.

He stood high as a divine and preacher. He had mastered the Puritan theology, more particularly the works of such giants as Owen, Manton, and Howe. Owen was a special favourite. Possibly he was more indebted to him than to any of the great systematic divines of the past, if we except John Calvin. From the very first he took a prominent place as a preacher. His first appearance in the pulpit led the thinking and intelligent to perceive that he had already in the germ all the elements which constitute a great preacher; and the expectations which they then formed were fully realised. He was all along a laborious student. He prepared most carefully for the pulpit. His sermons cost him great trouble. They were the productions of no ordinary commonplace man. They were characterised by depth of thought, beauty of diction, and brilliancy of imagination. To realise his mental power one would require to have heard him. His very appearance in the pulpit was a sermon. That broad, noble fore-head indicated intellectual power. Shortly after his death, at the urgent request of many of those who had derived benefit from his teaching, a volume of sermons was published under the editorship of the Rev. Dr A. S. Paterson, of Hutchesontown Free Church, Glasgow. These sermons are not sufficient to give one an adequate idea of him as a preacher. Whilst he did not, like some, think out his sermons, and depend afterwards on the impulse of the moment for words, whilst he wrote them out with the greatest care, and was very fastidious as to their composition, he was in the habit of leaving blanks to be filled up by extempore utterance, and frequently these off-hand passages, which were the application of some great doctrine or principle which he had been expounding, were the finest, and made the deepest and most lasting impression. But unfinished as they are, they are well worth being read.

Whilst Mr Macnab was not what the world would call a popular preacher, one who drew large crowds, yet he had all the elements which constitute a great preacher – a deep intellect, a lofty imagination, and a large loving heart. His sermons were too massive and doctrinal to be appreciated by the unreading and unthinking. But so long as solid and substantial Bible exposition is valued, so long will he hold a prominent place among the many great preachers of Disruption times.

Having thus glanced at him under these various aspects, we shall now, in drawing our sketch to a close, look at him as an ecclesiastic as a Free Church man. He was a loyal Free Churchman. He loved the Free Church, her constitution and distinctive principles. For Christ’s Headship over the Church, and His Headship over the nations for the good of the Church, he contended and suffered. From our knowledge of the man, we think we can affirm that he would be one of the last to assert that the abolition of patronage has removed every obstacle in the way of our going back to the Established Church. He knew that it was not patronage which forced us to leave the Established Church. The question which led to the Disruption was the question of the independence, the spiritual jurisdiction of the Church, and not until that great and vital doctrine is secured can any one who is attached to the principles of the Free Church think of going back. As one who loved Mr Macnab, and who under God owes to him more than I am able to express, I do not think I could do greater dishonour to his memory , and the “Disruption Worthies of the Highlands” than by looking at present in the direction of the State Church.

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 Archibald MacNeilage
In Memory of Archibald MacNeilage

Author: Rev. Alexander Stewart, D.D., Edinburgh
Source: The Monthly Record of the Free Church of Scotland, February, 1931, pages 27-28

It is with profound regret that we have to record the passing away, on Saturday, the 31st January, of Mr Archibald MacNeilage, Glasgow. The news of his death reached us just as The Monthly Record was going to press, but we considered it fitting to set aside for the present the Article which occupied this opening page, and to substitute for it a tribute to the memory of this outstanding servant of the Church, hurried and inadequate though our words must necessarily be.

I
The call to Mr MacNeilage came with startling suddenness. He was present at the special meeting of the Commission which was held in Edinburgh on the 21st January to consider the situation created in the Presbytery of Caithness through the equally sudden passing away of his brother, the Rev. John MacNeilage; he took part in the discussion with his accustomed alertness of mind, and altogether appeared to be in his usual vigour of mind and body. It may be recalled that on acknowledging the Moderator’s tribute to his brother, he stated, with moving simplicity, that it had been his intention, on retiring from business, to spend the evening of his days in Caithness, in order to render what help he could to the Cause of the Free Church, by ministering to her vacant congregations. “This plan,” he added, referring to the death of his brother, “will now never be fulfilled.” His words had a deeper prophetic significance than any one who heard him could possibly realise. God had “provided some better thing for him”; for within a few weeks there came to him the call to go up higher.

It is no part of our present purpose to speak of his professional career; for even if we attempted to do so we should only be speaking with second-hand knowledge. But it is a fact which is freely acknowledged by those who are competent to express an opinion on the subject, that in his own department – that is, as Editor of The Scottish Farmer – he stood in the very front rank as a journalist, imprinting the stamp of his own personality on practically every page of that well-known periodical. It is our part, rather, to speak of him as a Churchman, especially as the most prominent layman of his time in the Free Church of Scotland.

II
The service which Archibald MacNeilage rendered to the Free Church during the upheaval which followed the Union of 1900 simply cannot be over-estimated. It is perhaps not too much to say that there was no single man in the Church, whether minister or layman, who in greater degree proved a tower of strength to his Church during that trying period. His time and strength were ungrudgingly placed at her disposal, and invariably he commanded a leading position in her councils. For eighteen years he occupied the post of Editor of The Monthly Record, the pages of which became the medium through which he gave vigorous and unequivocal expression to the doctrines and principles of the Church. Mr MacNeilage was a man of great and varied gifts. He had a clear intellect, and was endowed with keen business acumen, while his powers were disciplined and developed through extensive reading, especially in the region of Church history and theology. In addition to all this, he was particularly resourceful in debate, with a gift of ready speech which sometimes rose to heights of moving eloquence.

A conspicuous feature of his character was the quality of fearless courage. He had strong convictions on many subjects and never shrank from giving them unfettered expression. Sometimes, indeed, he may have erred in the direction of excessive plainness of speech, and when he had occasion to take the rod of correction in his hand, the castigations which he administered, to those whom he regarded as erring from the path of ecclesiastical rectitude could be scathing indeed. On the other hand, no man could be more generous in his appreciation of the efforts of his fellows, and he was a warm-hearted and loyal friend. And if in recent years he was perhaps less tranquil and conciliatory in the rough and tumble of debate, his friends were well aware that any lack of restraint which he may have manifested on such occasions was due to the state of his health, which had been seriously impaired by two successive operations; and remembering this, they made full allowance for any hasty or impatient word. And even when they had to differ from him on questions of duty they never failed to recognise the honesty and sincerity which lay behind his point of view.

III
Above all, Mr MacNeilage was a man of deep religious faith. It was this inward element in his character that formed the dominating influence in his life, and inspired its activities. For many years he preached more or less regularly every Lord’s Day, and he used to say that he was never happier than when the toil of the week being ended he was able to retire to his study on Saturday evening with his Bible and prepare his message for the following Sabbath. He often spoke in the General Assembly with telling effect, but he was never more impressive than when his theme bore directly on the great verities of the evangelical faith. Then the fire of devotion was kindled into a flame within him, a new note of fervour crept into his voice, and his words soared into a region of impassioned utterance which left a deep impression on his hearers. But the Assembly Hall, which so often resounded to his appeals, will hear his voice no more, and his strong, arresting personality will be sorely missed. May our gracious Lord raise up other labourers to take the place of the men who, having served their generation by the will of God, have now fallen on sleep.

Next month we hope to publish tributes from one or two friends who were intimately associated with Mr MacNeilage in the work which formed the supreme interest of his life.
 

Tributes to Archibald MacNeilage

1 Author: W. Rounsfell Brown, B.L.
Source: The Monthly Record of the Free Church of Scotland, March, 1931, pages 61-64

To the very large congregation which had assembled in Milton Church on 3rd February, on the occasion of Mr MacNeilage’s funeral, I was accorded the privilege of speaking, and I did so as follows:

Fellow mourners, we have come to bury Cæsar, not to praise him. But we will praise God; and thank Him for the man He sent to be a fellow labourer with us, and for the kind of servant He made that man to be. Between Mr MacNeilage and myself there existed a long friendship, and a closer knowledge and sympathy as to character and conduct, ideals and shortcomings, than between either of us and any other man. But no one thing can I say about him that is not already known to some one among you. In every way in which he made contact with another person he revealed himself, and impressed his own personality as regards the business which had brought them together. He was not a modest man. He had gifts of an informed mind, of initiative activity, and powers of expression. He did not hide these, but made his light shine. He used all his powers and gifts to love God, and he served God with all his heart, and all his soul, and all his strength, and all his mind and he did not forget his neighbour.

He was a member of the Education Authority of Glasgow. Neglected children and neglected parents, in the Eastern division of the city, knew the shelter of his sympathy and the weight of his judgment, as their cases required.

To farmers he was a friend and critic; but no farm servant dared say that he neglected their interests. Into every public cause that affected sobriety, righteousness or Godliness he threw himself with pen or platform oratory. Some of you knew him only as an opponent. You knew that he fought fairly, and he fought well. He was a teacher of youth. For thirty-three years he conducted, in this Church or in the Hall adjoining it, a Bible Class; and he put the stamp of his teaching on at least three generations of young men and women, many of whom are living up to his lessons. He could preach with power from the Word of God as he found it written. Some may think he was narrow in dealing with modernism, but this is not so. I remember him saying to me, at the close of a discussion on a question of criticism: Walter, I know there is something to be said for some of the points on the other side: but I do detest men who stand up and assert with dogmatic assurance what they know to be as yet only “not proven.”

Did any of you want guidance in prayer? You had it from him. In public prayer – and I am sure the same is true of private prayer – he approached God with no formalism. He
expressed himself with intimacy and freedom, but yet with humility. I have said he was not a modest man. He did not need to be. But he was humble. In the intimacy of private life, I know that he showed humility, living conscious of his need. He was but human. He was a man of like passions as we are. If he needed chastisement and correction he had it in great measure; if he needed discipline it came upon him and he profited by it. If he needed forgiveness he knew where to go for it; and he obtained it. As often as he bowed himself to drink deeply from the well of Divine forgiveness he lifted his face with gladness, to tell his fellows of the Grace of Jesus Christ. Throughout life his aim was to see, and to declare, the glory of his Saviour. Life is over; and now he is beholding that glory.

Many who were present that day had known our friend in matters not connected with the Free Church. It was fitting, therefore, not to emphasise what his life had been, and his death seemed to threaten, to the Free Church. In these pages it becomes us to act otherwise: and to dwell upon our debt, and how it may be honoured.

Fifty-five years ago Archibald MacNeilage and I foregathered as members of Milton Free Church Young Men’s Sabbath Morning Meeting. Although older than me by fifteen months, he was by no means the senior of our company. But he was the most active, and the readiest speaker, even then surpassing his brother John. With scarce ever an outsider to address us, the youths of the class by ourselves, iron sharpening iron, concentrated on the Scriptures. For six or seven years we conned systematically from Genesis up into the Prophets, now and again pausing to write, and read, essays on Reformation History or the achievements of the Gospel in Scotland and regions beyond. Good training this against the winds and flood of later years!

Mr MacNeilage became a Sabbath school teacher, and, before long, Deacon, which latter office he adorned as Congregational Treasurer, continuing to be so for fully forty years. When thirty-three years of age he was elected an Elder. Next year the Jubilee year 1893 he and I were returned as Commissioners to the Assembly. From then till 1930 he continued to sit as representative from Dingwall. Finding our seats among the Constitutionalist Minority, on the Moderator’s left, we were fortunately delivered from the temptation to give heed only to burning questions or to pet aversions. On the contrary, Mr MacNeilage by ready interest in every subject quickly gained a hearing. By sincerity and sheer ability he made telling use of the same. I remember how he silenced Rev. John MacNeill when the latter was rousing the gallery by mockery of the Achnasheen Conference. Dr Stewart of Lovedale invited our friend to the serene privacy of the Moderator’s ante-room there to plead for his oratory as a help, rather than a hindrance to the completeness of the impending union. On the day of crisis – October 1900 – Mr MacNeilage’s speech, seconding Prof. Bannatyne‘s amendment against the Union, provided the dramatic feature in a great debate.

Acknowledgment has already been made in the Record of the signal service by pen and speech, on platform and in pulpit, which Mr. MacNeilage rendered during the disturbed and trying time from 1900 till 1004, that is, in the wilderness days before the Church came into her own. In the following years of excitement, of legitimate expectation, and scanty settlement, he was equally helpful with administrative counsel. But that which best tried and discovered his quality as a Free Church man came after 1910.

During the last twenty years a new generation has arisen called upon to continue Christian life in, and through, the Free Church, but without the stimulus of the past so much to them unknown. Facing them are contrasts and distractions which call the more for constancy and diligence. To that call he was ever responsive. By turns he served on all Assembly Committees, always putting stress on the Sustentation Fund and the Training of the Ministry. His working thesis was: Given an educated ministry, faithful to the testimony for which the Free Church stands, the first duty of congregations is to provide for these ministers an adequate sustenance. Such being done – and he gave freely of his time and substance for its accomplishment – there follows a compelling necessity to send the Gospel overseas, and there to hand over the people fit to be sent. Foreign missions were dear to his heart. He was one of the prime movers in the beginning of the Peruvian Mission. Although in the 1929 Assembly he was strong against the outlay of a large sum on a new College building, that was only a difference of opinion on a practical question of how to promote missionary work. The College itself and its purpose he fully believed in. After the vote went against the view he had espoused, he told the Assembly that the resolution carried was a challenge to every one to double his givings for Foreign Missions. He himself obeyed the challenge.

On the personal and intimate side I will say no more than this: the friendship of over half a century was a joy and strength; it has become a precious memory. Mr MacNeilage had a capacity for friendship, as others can tell. All of us who were privileged will agree that the best memorial we can raise is to carry on, according to the Reformed Faith which is the ground and pillar of the Free Church.
 

2 Author: Rev. Duncan MacDonald, M.A.. Glasgow
Source: The Monthly Record of the Free Church of Scotland, March, 1931, pages 61-64

At the close of the forenoon service on Sabbath the minister of Milton Free Church, after referring to the irreparable loss sustained by the congregation by the death of Mr MacNeilage, went on to say:

What would you say was his master-passion? It was love of his Redeemer. Many have been greatly impressed by his stern sense of duty; many by his love for the old paths; yet these things, as well as his loyalty, courage, and kindliness were but the streams from the fountain – the fountain itself was a magnificently unselfish and adoring love of his Redeemer. I remember on one occasion that he gave out to be sung at a service the closing verses of the 132nd Psalm, and after repeating the last two lines:

he said. I never hear these lines sung but I feel I could cry “Hurrah!” Such a remark coming from one usually so reticent is very revealing. He delighted in everything that tended to the honour of the Lord he adored and with a perfect hatred he hated anything that tended to dim the effulgence of that glory. He was thought by some to be a severe critic of preaching and preachers. In point of fact any sermon which gave Christ the glory was delightful to him. He loved the doctrines of Grace for they put the crown upon his head; he loved the Free Church because she holds fast these doctrines and because in her worship and in the very posture of her worshippers she seeks to the uttermost to do honour to the Saviour. In his last public prayer he touched on the fact that we were standing in His presence to do Him honour.

He loved our Church, and he loved not in word and tongue but in deed and in truth. He had a hearty contempt for those who gave good words and nothing else. His Church cost him much. His family could – if they would – tell you how much of his time, how much of his strength, and how much of his money he gave willingly. Into every sermon and platform address and Bible class lesson he put the whole of a great heart and mind. His love for his Saviour and for the things that belong to Him, showed itself at times in a rather remarkable way. With the Apostle he was inclined to bestow more abundant honour on those things that are thought to be less honourable or less comely. When he conducted a service it was noticeable that the verses of the psalms he gave out to be sung were not those that are most usually sung, while more than once I heard him draw attention to the very clean parts of the well-worn and well-thumbed old book which lies on the pulpit in the hall. “Why,” he asked, “is Ezekiel so seldom preached from? and Obadiah? I never heard a sermon preached from a text in Obadiah.”

He will be missed by us, sorely, sorely missed because his seat will be empty. We shall miss his help, his counsel, his splendid courage, his strong personality. How much I shall miss him I cannot tell. He was my friend, and in twelve years never an angry word passed between us, and we never parted with a cloud upon our happy relations. Let our loss be a spur to us. We must go forward. The One remains. Still there are with us younger men. Will they not take up the sword which this good soldier of Jesus Christ has laid down. “My sword,” said Valiant for Truth, “I leave to him that shall succeed me in my pilgrimage, my courage and my skill to him that can get them, and my scars I carry over to show that I have fought His battles who now will be my Rewarder.”

3 Author: Principal John Macleod, D.D.
Source: The Monthly Record of the Free Church of Scotland, March, 1931, pages 61-64

Many who knew him will have much to say of Mr MacNeilage. They may speak of his remarkable gifts, of his fine presence, of his indomitable will and of his tireless energy. He was a many-sided man; and few of his generation caught the public eye and ear as he did. In writing of him, now that he is gone from us, I wish to deal with the religious convictions that gave tone and colour to his life. What he said of his brother John, to whom he was so deeply attached, held good of himself: “He was the child of many prayers.”

Men say rightly enough that heredity counts for much and that heredity and environment have the virtual making of a man. In Mr MacNeilage’s case heredity and environment were both of the best. His parents were solid Evangelicals of the old Scottish school and their home was regulated by the principles that seek to shape the young life to the best and highest end. They aimed, and aimed rightly and wisely, at teaching their children the fear of the Lord. The mother was a remarkable woman with keen intellect and firm purpose. But much as her son Archibald owed to her, his special reverence and love went out to his worthy father. He was a man of solid parts and steadfast character, who showed in his bearing the chastened tenderness of one who has been taught in the best of all schools.

At an early age the father came to know the power of the Gospel in connection with the ministry of John Grant, who was the Disruption minister of Petty and who was early after 1843 settled as the first Free Church minister of Roseneath. Soon after the great change came over him, he was as a young convert brought by a relative into touch with the lively Evangelical life of the Greenock Gaelic congregation and became much attached to its ministers, John Macrae and John Kennedy. At Communion times he was wont to cross the Firth of Clyde to the Greenock services, and there he heard John Kennedy’s cousin, Dr Kennedy of Dingwall. The preaching of Dr Kennedy exercised a profound influence upon him, and this hearer from Roseneath was among those that most heartily and intelligently sympathised with Dr Kennedy’s outlook on the Church’s life and with his reading of her duty. The inmates of his household were brought up to know what the witness of the Free Church of Scotland was and to look at it in the light of the Evangel itself.

In due course when Archibald MacNeilage was called by grace he entered into a whole- hearted appreciation and acceptance of his father’s principles, and in his Glasgow life associated himself with the congregation of Milton Free Church which preserved the traditions of Rabbi Duncan, who was its first minister. It was thus direct line of descent from the great Evangelical Tradition of Glasgow that will ever be associated with the name of Dr John Love of Anderston. Throughout life Mr MacNeilage was true to the memory of Hugh Macdougall, who was the minister of Milton congregation when he as a young man joined it. Mr Macdougall’s successor was John Geddes, who was a man by himself.

Endowed with a fine intellect, possessed of a remarkable gift of style and deeply schooled in godliness, Mr Geddes exercised a fascinating influence on a circle of thoughtful minds. His views of divine truth were enlarged and striking and profound. His preaching, while richly doctrinal, was searchingly experimental, being a great teacher of Christian truth, and was both discriminating and comforting. He was a great teacher of Christian truth and his altogether remarkable gift of prayer distinguished him among even the best of his contemporaries. Archibald MacNeilage and his brother John bore throughout life the impress of his teaching. John, perhaps, in his type of thought and gift of literary expression was the purest specimen of the old Milton strain that one could meet with anywhere. But Archibald was very distinctly a Miltonian moulded in the school of John Geddes; and he passed on others the influence that told upon himself. With his marked individuality and masterfulness, Mr MacNeilage was not the man to hide his light under a bushel. The maintenance of the Evangelical witness was the task that called him to public service in the Church. No one that at all knew him could fail to discern, so transparent and straightforward was he, where his heart was. He loved his Lord and Redeemer. He loved His Word. He loved His Gospel. He loved His people. He loved His Church and Cause. Few that heard him in the General Assembly when he spoke directly on the theme of the Evangel can forget the intense emphasis and heart-stirring fervour with which on occasion he would quote some of his favourite hymns:

Or it might be:

“Sovereign grace o’er sin abounding
Ransomed souls the tidings swell,
Tis a deep that knows no sounding.”

It was when he warmed on themes like these that we had the true Archibald MacNeilage revealed to us. He was the willing captive of his Redeeming Lord, and loyalty to that Lord determined his attitude to the public questions into which with his whole heart he threw himself.

In his honourable calling through the week as a journalist and an Agricultural expert, Mr MacNeilage might easily have taken the most prominent position that is open to any man in England. But the situation of the Free Church and her needs made such an appeal to him that he brushed aside the prospect of the most tempting promotion so that he might serve the cause of his Lord in his much-tried Mother Church in Scotland. His Church has had few such generous and disinterested friends as he was, and his career of unselfish service to her can be traced to the formative influences of the godly home in which he drew his first breath.

It is better to wear out than to rust out, and emphatically Mr MacNeilage wore out. Man is immortal till his work is done. In early manhood he was stricken down and was hovering between life and death. His godly father wrestling in prayer for him was enabled to rest in and to plead the word of promise: “With long life will I satisfy him.” The life that looked like to be cut short was lengthened out and time and again he was snatched from the gaping jaws of death. Once, when he told of this promise on which his father rested in regard to him and which was made good, he said, Would that the words that follow were also made good to me – “and I will show him My salvation.” We may feel satisfied that this has now happened and that he has gone to see the face of Him whom having not seen he heard.

“For he was a faithful man and feared God above many.”

4 Author: Professor D. M. Blair, King’s College, London
Source: The Monthly Record of the Free Church of Scotland, March, 1931, pages 61-64

“And He gave some teachers” Eph.4:11.

Amid many parts played on the public stage during his long and active life, another part of Mr MacNeilage’s work, perhaps less well known because performed before a more restricted audience, no less deserves remembrance. For more years than the writer has knowledge of, Mr MacNeilage conducted a Bible Class for young men and women in Milton Church on Sabbath evenings in winter. The Class was attended not only by those of his own congregation but also by visitors from elsewhere, and many of its one-time members are now widely scattered; but to all of them, the world over, the news of the death of their old and much-loved teacher must have come as a great personal sorrow. One who was privileged for a score of years to attend the Class feels it his duty to pen these lines of grateful memorial.

Probably no part of his multifarious work was dearer to Mr MacNeilage than his Bible Class; possibly none may prove more fruitful. It shall be said, this man and that man was born there. We who attended realised how highly favoured we were; we went, not merely from a sense of duty, but for the sheer enjoyment of listening to the finest efforts of one who was a born teacher. At the beginning of each session, when appealing for regular attendance on the part of the members, Mr MacNeilage used to say that on his part he would promise never to come unprepared. Never was promise more faithfully kept, and that in spite of crowded week-days and frequent other Sabbath work. Here was no loose padding, no facile talk; the detailed and closely reasoned teaching was the fruit of careful reading made fertile by a clear intellect and a marvellous memory – the familiar little black note-book could have held only the merest skeleton of those fluent discourses.

One recalls the time-honoured routine of the simple service the opening psalm (the teacher could be his own precentor on occasion), the prayer, the calling of the roll, the word of greeting to some old member or friend from the north whose chance visit never passed unnoticed. Then the exposition of a few verses in turn from Proverbs, in the best Scots tradition; the precepts of the Wise Man gained a new force when commented on by one whose life we recognised to have been conspicuously guided by them. The two major lessons of the evening followed, the first directly Biblical, for many years a study of the journeys and writings of the apostle Paul; the second usually historical the early Fathers and creeds, the Reformation in many lands, the Church in Scotland, the great missionaries. The singing of a psalm between the two was a concession made in later years to some of us who wished to lessen for him the strain of the work. At the end, another psalm and an impressive benediction in one of the longer apostolic forms. But the great thing was the study of Paul’s epistles. Here, if ever, the Apostle had a man like-minded with himself to expound his teaching. How greatly one regrets that there is no permanent record of that wonderful study of Pauline theology. As it is, there are many passages in the epistles which one cannot read without hearing in memory the expressive cadences of that strong voice. What made the teaching so impressive was that we felt we were permitted to see something of the inner life of the teacher himself. How much he seemed to have in common with the Apostle he loved so well – the same powers of clear, logical argument; the same bursts of enthusiasm transcending all logic; the same all-mastering devotion to his Lord; the same rejoicing in His risen glory. How often the fervent rapture of the Apostle would light a similar flame in the teacher to illumine a burst of eloquence that sprang so clearly from his very heart. One recalls the light in his eyes as he often ended on a favourite couplet:

“But yet the crown that He doth wear
Upon Him flourish shall.”

And now he has gone from us. On the day he died, the writer read in the course of family worship the cry of David upon Abner’s death: “Know ye not that there is a prince and a
great man fallen this day in Israel?” Later, when the sad news came, we knew that it had been so indeed. It is left to us to mourn his loss, and pray that we to whom so much was given, may not be found wanting in that which shall be expected of us. But of him it may well be said: “I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith.” We know that he has entered into the joy of his Lord.

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 James M. Macpherson, late of Killean

Author: A. McLellan
Source: The Monthly Record of the Free Church of Scotland, January 1906, page 106

On Sabbath, 21st October, 1887, the Rev. Murdo MacKenzie, Inverness, preached two most impressive and appropriate sermons relative to the death of this greatly esteemed and lamented minister of the gospel in the Free Church, Killean. From respect to the deceased, and the preacher’s fame both while resident in, and since leaving Kintyre, the church was well filled. The northern part of the parish was specially represented. The texts chosen in Gaelic and English respectively were Hebrews 12:1-2 and Philippians 1:21, and during the delivery the vast congregation seemed deeply affected, the eyes of not a few being saturated with tears when reminded that the voice of him who for such a lengthened period nigh forty years was now to be heard more, the duties of the pulpit having been exchanged for the service of the everlasting song of the redeemed above. In concluding his remarks Mr. MacKenzie said:

It is now twenty-five years past since I first became acquainted with your late esteemed pastor, having come to Kintyre a mere stripling, raw and inexperienced, but I never can forget the friendly embrace accorded me. During that period many remarkable changes have taken place. The late godly minister of Tarbert, Mr. Campbell, who so often fed and comforted the people of God from the pulpit, has gone to his rest; Mr. Gillies, who was in truth a kindred spirit with Nathaniel, is no more; Mr. MacNeill, another co-presbyter, whose eloquence so often thrilled us, has likewise been taken away; and this day I occupy the place of your late pastor. I am not here to praise him, for no minister ever less loved the applause of men than your late minister, whose single aim was to sink into utter insignificance that Christ only might be exhibited before each soul in the preaching of the Gospel; and sure I am that were he today standing near me his language would be: “Say nothing whatever about me, but extol my Saviour to the congregation. You have now an opportunity of which I am forever deprived, and do tell my dear people to close immediately with Christ.” I had many opportunities of knowing the worth of your late pastor, Mr. MacPherson.

There is every reason to believe that he was early brought under the influence of Divine truth, and perhaps we are not wrong in tracing his spiritual birth, indirectly, to the labours of an earnest minister who left a savour of godliness which survives until the present day – Mr. Robertson of Badenoch. Your minister was wont to give me interesting and graphic accounts of the preaching of those eminent servants of Christ under whom he derived much spiritual profit after leaving his home, including such men as Rev. Messrs. Bonar of Larbert, R. MacDonald, Blairgowrie and the late William C. Burns, while I endeavoured to describe in his hearing the noble features of some of our eminent preachers in the Highlands.

A large-hearted and liberal-minded man, he always rejoiced at anyone’s success as a minister of the Gospel; indeed, no one felt more delighted at the prosperity of Christ’s Kingdom in our own or other lands. Besides being a distinguished theologian your late minister was a scholar of no mean order; but such was his humility and unassuming manner that unlike many without a tithe of his learning there never was the least display of his extraordinary accomplishments, save what emanated from him through his ordinary conversation.

Again he took a firm and unflinching stand by the principles of the Disruption and would gladly and willingly, if called upon, have laid down his life for the glorious doctrines for which our forefathers suffered, such as the Headship of Christ over His Church as well as the King of Nations. He gave no countenance whatever to the innovations recently introduced into our church, and though he never took any active part in discussing these matters in her courts – thinking there were abler and better men for the purpose – his vote was always on the right side. His unobtrusive manner on this point carried him too far, and his brethren were not a little annoyed that a minister of his power and ability would not vindicate, by voice as well as by action, the position he maintained. “Far other aims,” however, “his heart had learned to prize.” He was a man of peace, and it is chiefly as a faithful ambassador of Christ that he will always be remembered by you, his sorrowing congregation, and by the brethren with whom he was wont to associate in the Presbytery, the greater number of whom have now ceased from their labours. In his preaching he never hesitated to give due place to the three R’s – the embodiment of the Christian Faith – Ruin by the Fall, Redemption through Christ, Regeneration by the Spirit.

Once more, Mr MacPherson was a man of prayer and we cannot believe but that his earnest pleadings at a throne of Grace will yet have a glorious resurrection. We have reason to hope that his labours were greatly blessed at the commencement of his work, though his heart, in common with others, was saddened by cases of back-sliding, and may it not have been destined that his successor is to reap the fruit of the seed which he so earnestly and prayerfully sowed among you during the latter part of his ministry. God grant that it may be so and to His name be the glory. Amen.

In proclaiming the church vacant, at the request of the Free Church, Mr. MacKenzie, went on to speak of the solemn responsibility now devolving upon the congregation and earnestly trusted that each and all interested would make the matter a subject of prayer.

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 Some Northern Fathers
Rev John Macqueen of Strontian and Daviot

Author: J. M. [perhaps Principal John Macleod]
Source: The Monthly Record of the Free Church of Scotland, 1930, page 87

Our Disruption Fathers were a generation of great evangelists. Their succession as a generation did not attain to their stature Yet there were among them here and there scattered over Scotland, men that were in all aspects worthy of being set at their side as their peers. One of these was the excellent minister of Strontian and Daviot.

Mr Macqueen was a native of the Isle of Skye. His people belonged to one of the glens that open on to Uig Bay. The early Evangelical movement in Skye was in connection with the apparently casual visit of Mr Farquharson, one of the Haldane preachers who was on his way to Canada, and was compelled by stress of weather to spend some time in Uig. Soon afterwards the Baptist wing of the Haldane movement undertook itinerant evangelistic work in Skye, and here and there some of the early converts identified themselves with this movement. The one memorial of their work that still remains is the little Baptist Church near Broadford. The parents of Mr Macqueen belonged to that Baptist connection. He was born about the date of Waterloo, and before he was thirty years of age he was a schoolmaster in Mull. It was in those years that he came to know the Gospel in its power. With its letters he had been familiar from his youth. Now, however, he passed through a searching work of conviction before he came to cherish the hope of personal salvation.

It was not long after his conversion that he set his face on a course of study with a view to the ministry of the Gospel; and though he was a married man with a young family he was able to fight his way through, and to qualify in the ordinary way. During part of the time when his studies were in process he acted as unordained helper to the Rev. John MacRae of the Free Gaelic Church, Greenock, who was his good friend in those difficult days.

Shortly after he was licensed to preach the Gospel, Mr Macqueen was heartily called to be the first minister of one of the most historically interesting charges in the Free Church – Strontian was the centre of a widespread congregation. In later days the Free Church had no fewer than four charges within the sphere of what was Mr Macqueen’s first charge – Strontian, Morvern, Ardnamurchan, and Acharacle. This was one of the districts where the feudal power of the landlords was put in exercise to hold down and crush the Free Church. But though Sir James Riddell would not give a site on his estate on which a Free church might be built, a floating church was built on the Clyde and towed to Loch Sunart, where it was anchored some little distance from the shore and was accessible to the people by boat. One night a great gale blew and the floating church dragged her anchors and was cast ashore on a sandy beach above the ordinary high-water mark. There it could not be meddled with as the sea had been higher up the shore than where it lay, and now the people were able with comfort to attend this House of God which in so strange a way had found a site where tyranny could not interfere with it.

The Loch Sunart district had been favoured with being the scene of some of the choicest agents of the Gaelic Schools Society such as Kenneth Ross, Angus Maciver, Hector Morrison and John Mackay. At Strontian, Mr Francis MacBean had often preached. And, above all, the district was the centre of the successful labours of Alexande Macintyre, whose preaching was followed by awakenings wherever he laboured. There were also in that region some of the fruits of Peter MacBride‘s earnest and powerful ministry in the days of the Ten Years’ Conflict and of the Disruption. So Mr Macqueen was surrounded at the outset of his ministry by a group of devoted men of God. These had goodly successors and when he left the district, there were those that outlived himself who manifested to a later generation the type of exercised and intelligent Evangelicalism which was so characteristic of the Disruption epoch. The names of Dugald Cameron, of Alexander Cameron the Catechist, of John Campbell of Glenmore, of Alexander Cameron of Acharacle, of Donald Cameron of Camusachoire, and of Donald Macmaster, to name no more, will remain fresh in the Christian tradition of North Argyll. Within the bounds of his congregation, though at its remote outskirts towards Lochaber, lived Donald Cameron of Guisachan, whose son’s name – the worthy son of a worthy father – the Free Church people of Lewis will long revere, for Hector Cameron of Back was one of the Strontian congregation. His father and the family would make their way to Strontian to worship though well-nigh fifteen miles of rough mountainous country lay between it and their home.

After Mr Macqueen was settled for a few years in Strontian there was a great awakening that attended his labours. This movement affected not only his own congregation, but also the Free Church congregations of Lochaber; and throughout the wide bounds from Badenoch to Ardnamurchan Point there was hardly a name that was held in like esteem with that of Mr Macqueen of Strontian.

Some time after the death of Mr Archibald Cook, the congregation of Daviot called Mr Macqueen to be their minister. He accepted their call, and was settled in his last charge in 1867. Here he laboured for the last twenty-four years or so of his life. When he revisited his old flock and saw the welcome they accorded him, he said that if he had thought that they were so much attached to him he would never have left them. He was happy, however, in Daviot, and though the same extensive work of awakening did not attend his labours there, he was eminently useful as a pastor. He watered, as Apollos did, what Archibald Cook had planted. As a preacher he was clear, discriminating and helpful. He had a fund of quaint mother-wit and great common sense. With his kindly way he drew young and old to him; and this helped to commend his Lord’s word by removing stumbling-blocks that might be be found in a distant and cold manner. The old Evangelicals of the straths about Inverness were attached to him. He was as Daniel was, in words which in his funeral sermon his neighbour, Mr Murdo Mackenzie, applied to him, a “man greatly beloved.”

In the Highland ministry of the Free Church he was one of a remarkable group of of three. As young ministers they were thrown together in their early days. When Mr Macqueen was minister of Strontian, W. S. Macdougall was Free Church minister of Appin, and Christopher Munro was Peter Maclean‘s successor in Tobermory. Of the other two, memorial volumes have been published which show what masters in Israel his two friends were. No memorial volume lets us see Mr Macqueen as a preacher. But he left a witness in the consciences of his hearers that he was indeed a herald of the skies. One little thing appeared from his pen. He translated into Gaelic Jonathan Edwards’s tremendous sermon on “Sinners in the hand of an angry God.”

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 Rev. John McRae

Author: D. M. or Rev. P. MacMaster, Kildalton
Source: Disruption Worthies of the Highlands , page 115

John McRae

John McRae was born at Ardelve, Lochalsh, in May 1794. His father occupied a good position as a farmer in that part of the country, but owing to reverses, principally through the dishonesty of a party in whom he had put confidence, he came to be in straitened circumstances. He gave his children, however, the best educational advantages the district afforded; and his son John made good progress in the ordinary branches, as well as in Latin and Greek, before the state of his father’s affairs made it necessary he should be removed from school. He spent his youth and early manhood in such occupations as he could obtain in Kintail, and was a good deal employed both as a fisherman and as a shepherd. His experience in that line of life was afterwards of great advantage to him. It would not be easy to find a better steersman than him anywhere; and in the course of his ministry his knowledge of seamanship was often needed, especially whilst minister in Lewis. He used to describe how on one occasion, when proceeding in an open boat from Stornoway to Ness, he was overtaken by a storm at the Butt of Lewis, and how, in steering the boat, his attention was necessarily so occupied as that he dared not look away from his work to cast but a single glance towards the shore, and fervently wished the men who were with him and he should get safe on land once more. The surf beat so strongly on the shore, that it would be impossible for them to land in safety, but that on seeing their approach, a large number of men formed themselves into two lines facing one another, and holding by each other’s hands, walked out a little distance into the sea, and watching the moment when the boat was borne in by a huge wave, seized her and carried her bodily with her crew and cargo into a place of safety.

Many years afterwards when minister at Lochs, where in visiting his people he had to go long distances by sea, the people of Skye presented him with a yacht to make his work easier for him – the value of the gift being much enhanced by Mr McLeod, Snizort, having himself sailed her from Skye to Lewis, that he might hand her over to Mr McRae. This vessel was of much service to him in visiting his congregation, and at communion seasons, when the manse was much too small for the number of visitors that came often from great distances, he turned her neat cabin into a bed-room, where several could be accommodated as she lay at anchor in the adjoining loch.

Very many will remember the use he made in his preaching of his experience as a shepherd. They will remember remarkable sermons he preached from the texts, “The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want,” and “All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and the Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all.” The last text from which he ever preached with wonderful power and unction, although almost in a dying state, was, “He shall feed his flock like a shepherd: he shall gather the lambs with his arm, and carry them in his bosom, and shall gently lead those that are with young.” A passage in that sermon will never be forgotten by those who heard it, when he described a shepherd, a powerful man, heedless of the danger, proceeding in a winter’s storm to the mountains, and carrying back on his shoulder to a place of safety a sheep of his flock, and rejoicing in having rescued it from death. And his experience as a shepherd served him in good stead on other occasions. During the unhappy controversy on the subject of union with other churches (he thought union should have taken place), in dealing at a public meeting in Skye with a boastful statement of a northern minister, who said that instead of following the lead of a certain distinguished minister in the south, that that minister had followed his lead, Mr McRae observed, that when he was a shepherd he would have several dogs with him on the hill, that they sometimes trotted on before him, and at other times followed him, but that whether they went before, or came after him, he was always master. But to return to his early life.

He spent his youth without God, and without hope in the world. In many parts of the Western Highlands and Islands at that time, the people lived in practical heathenism. With very few exceptions, the pulpits were occupied by ministers having no religion – genuine Moderates, who took advantage of their retired situations in the country to take to themselves all sorts of license, shewing an utter disregard for the duties of their office, and often for the laws of morality. It was not rare to find among them men who were habitual swearers and drunkards. Instances were known where the parish minister added considerably to his income by distilling and smuggling whisky. The people as a rule neglected the ordinances of religion, and spent the Sabbath either visiting in each other’s houses, or when the weather permitted, lounging lazily on the hill-side, never considering it their duty to go to church, excepting on sacramental occasions, when all and sundry were admitted, sometimes in a state of drunkenness, to the communion table.

It was in circumstances such as these Mr McRae was brought up, and he came to manhood before he had any concern about his soul’s salvation, although always exemplary in his outward conduct. God’s time however came for awakening him to concern about his eternal interests, and, as has often been the case with men who were largely made use of, for spiritual good to others, he was led through great depths of soul conflict to the experience of peace and joy in believing. His attention was first arrested by the example of an elder sister, whose living piety made him uneasy about himself, and convinced him that there is a reality in religion to which he was a stranger. But the special means employed for fastening conviction on his heart and conscience, was a sermon preached by Dr Macdonald of Ferintosh, in the open air (the use of the church having been refused him by Mr Lachlan McKenzie‘s successor at Lochcarron), from Solomon’s Song 3:11: “Go forth, O ye daughters of Zion, and behold king Solomon with the crown wherewith his mother crowned him in the day of his espousals, and in the day of the gladness of his heart.” His distress of mind was for a time extreme, unfitting him for the ordinary duties of life. It would not be easy at that time to meet a more powerful man anywhere; but he has been known to tell, that he had been so weakened by soul distress, as that when his foot struck against a clod or stone on the hill-side, he fell helplessly to the ground. Many in the district thought he must have lost his reason, and uttered lamentations over so fine a young man being lost to his family and friends. It was at Ferintosh during a communion season he first experienced any relief. He had gone there a complete stranger, and owing to the crowded state of the place, people having assembled from great distances to attend the communion, he thought he was to be left to make the field his lodging, when he was received into the house of a worthy woman, whom afterwards he frequently entertained at his manse at Knockbain. It was during the closing address by the elder Dr Mackintosh of Tain, on the Sabbath evening, that he was led forth to the light, in being enabled to look to Him who came to call not the righteous but sinners to repentance; and it was his life-work ever afterwards, for the long period of nearly sixty years, to speak of His grace to his fellow-men as few have ever done on this sinful earth. In view of his conversion to God, a passage of Scripture will occur to many, words from which he has been known to preach with great power: “For I have appeared unto thee for this purpose, to make thee a minister and a witness both of these things which thou hast seen, and of those things in the which I will appear unto thee to open their eyes, and to turn them from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan unto God, that they may receive forgiveness of sins, and inheritance among them which are sanctified by faith that is in me.”

Mr McRae was no sooner led to the hope of the gospel, than he turned his attention to his early studies, and in a short time he was able to take charge of a public school at Arnisdale, Glenelg. It was there that, for the first time, he began to exhort in public; and a work of grace began in the district as striking and as satisfactory as he at all saw in his after career. And it was there his thoughts were first turned to the ministry. He attended college at Aberdeen and Edinburgh, studying theology under Dr Chalmers. In some of the literary classes he took a high place, especially in mathematics. On obtaining license, he was employed for a time as assistant to Mr Russell of Gairloch; and in 1833, on a vacancy occurring at Ness, Lewis, he was, to the great joy of the people, inducted to the charge there. His ministry at Ness extended over a period of six years, when he was translated to Knockbain in 1839, where he laboured for nine years, and wielded great influence over the whole of the North and West Highlands, both in the pulpit and on the platform, in expounding and defending the principles of the Church. He had in his immediate neighbourhood such men as Dr Macdonald, Ferintosh, and Mr Stewart, Cromarty, with whom he was privileged to co-operate cordially in every good work. With Mr Stewart he was on the most affectionate terms, and never spoke of him but with the utmost veneration. Mr Stewart’s profound intellect and deep piety greatly attracted Mr McRae; and Mr Stewart, on the other hand, had the utmost regard for his friend, who was scarcely conscious of his own great powers, regarding himself as less than the least of all saints. The one was very much the complement of the other, Mr Stewart’s bright sunshine and playfulness having a happy influence on the stern and almost severe character of Mr McRae’s mind.

Mr McRae has been known to say that he received from Mr Stewart what perhaps he felt to be the sharpest rebuke he ever got. It was on the evening of a communion Monday. Dr Macdonald and Mr Stewart were both at Knockbain assisting at the services. At dinner Mr Stewart was in the most exuberant spirits, and kept the table in a roar of laughter. At last Mr McRae, who had been silent and impatient, interfered, and said, “Really, Mr Stewart, this is going too far; you can’t call this a fitting conclusion to the work in which we have been engaged.” Mr Stewart’s reply was to rise, and placing his hands on Mr McRae’s shoulders, danced playfully behind him, until he compelled him to join in the general laugh. But late in the evening after the others had retired, Mr Stewart very solemnly observed, “McRae, you rebuked me at dinner for my apparent levity; but with my habits, spending so much of my time alone, I think I would have been dead long ago, but that I have occasional times of relaxation when I find myself among friends.” “I felt in his presence,” Mr McRae afterwards said, “as if I would be glad I could hide myself in the earth.”

The controversy raging within the Church was at this time approaching a crisis, and Mr McRae, who all along took his place with the evangelical party, took the liveliest interest in those proceedings which issued in the Disruption. In the winter of 1842, and spring of 1843, he was much occupied in explaining to the people in the North and West the principles at stake. His character as a Highlands and Islands preacher procured access to quarters which otherwise would be closed on him; and there was no other man who was made so largely instrumental in preparing the people for joining the Free Church when the Disruption actually took place. His suitableness for the work in which he was engaged appeared, especially when opposition was offered. His manliness, his living piety, his wonderful eloquence, his zeal for the honour of Christ as King in Zion, his thorough hatred of Moderatism, and, when occasion called for it, his readiness at repartee, secured the confidence of the people; and there was great joy in a district when it was announced that “Macràth mòr,” as they fondly called him, was about to visit them. He was eminently the people’s minister; there was perhaps never in the Highlands a man of whom it was more true that “the common people heard him gladly.” There was corresponding hatred felt by opponents. “I would have struck McRae, but that I was afraid he is stronger than me,” was the remark of a Moderate minister, a man himself of gigantic strength, after receiving a rebuff from him.

At a meeting in Lochaber in the spring of 1843, a Moderate minister planted himself opposite Mr McRae when addressing the people, and ostentatiously took notes to prepare himself for making a statement in reply, and those present could never forget how utterly disconcerted he was when Mr McRae’s graphic description of a “ministeir moderate,” tallying so exactly with the character of his friend opposite, led the people to turn round and stare at him after every other sentence, with a look that meant, “That is you; we know you.” No reply was attempted. In Tyree, the hillock on which he preached on Sabbath is still called “Cnoc Mhicràth.” On the Monday he again met with the people, and addressed them on the Church’s position, when the parish minister, a poor creature, got up at the close, and produced a manuscript which he was to read in reply, when Mr McRae quietly remarked. “See that poor man going to read what probably he was busy writing yesterday,” creating a general laugh, that put a stop to the reading.

It has often been said that throughout the Highlands the people “came out” at the Disruption from ignorance and misapprehension. Nothing could be wider of the truth; nowhere could be found persons who more thoroughly understood the question at issue than might be met with in many a remote glen in the Highlands, and nowhere for many a long day have people suffered so much in Scotland for adherence to principle as some of our Highlanders did for joining the Free Church at the Disruption. Servants were dismissed, tenants were ejected, for no other reason than that they could not conscientiously remain connected with an Establishment which now no longer possessed a shred of spiritual freedom, and whose ministers were regarded as mere stipend-lifters, who loved Erastianism for its own sake, and who certainly did not make it their business to “watch for souls as they that must give account.” To people thus suffering for conscience’ sake, the consolations of the gospel were unspeakably precious, and the visits of ministers in whom they put confidence were much prized. In all states of the weather, and from great distances, they assembled to hear the word preached; and it cannot be doubted but often in circumstances of great outward discomfort, much of the Lord’s presence was felt, and a time of tribulation was turned into a time of rejoicing.

The writer remembers an occasion of this kind, when Dr Macdonald of Ferintosh preached in Lochaber in the spring of 1844. Lochiel had refused to give a site, and at Kilmallie the people had erected a large canvas tent just above high-water mark on an exposed shore, where they met for worship. An evening sermon on a week day was announced by Dr Macdonald, who was passing on his way to the south. During the day an unusually severe storm came on, the wind blew a hurricane, and with showers of driving sleet, it was no easy matter to go from any distance to the place of meeting. The tent, which accommodated several hundreds, was however crowded, and seldom has minister preached to a more deeply-interested audience. With the storm raging outside, and the noise made by the flapping of the canvas and the creaking of ropes, it needed all the speaker’s power to make himself heard. He took his text from Isaiah 32:1, 2, and as he spoke of “the Man who is a hiding-place from the wind and a covert from the tempest,” there were many present to whom we believe it was a word in season, and who on that February evening sought refuge under the shelter of the Rock of Ages from a storm more dreadful than that which blew on them from the brow of Ben Nevis. When the brief service came to an end, many were heard saying, “We hoped he was but beginning when he brought the sermon to a conclusion.”

For some years after the Disruption Mr McRae was much employed in the Church’s work in the Highlands and Islands, encouraging and directing struggling congregations, avoiding no amount of trouble or exposure in his endeavours to bring the gospel within reach of his countrymen in remote and destitute parts, where until then its privileges were not enjoyed. In reference to his work at the time of the Disruption, and in forming congregations afterwards, Dr Elder of Rothesay, in a funeral sermon preached immediately after his death, says of him:- “Of his great and valuable services to our beloved Free Church I cannot here speak particularly. At the Disruption period he was, as I can testify from personal recollection and experience, a great power in the North and in the West, in expounding and defending as few men could do the glorious prerogatives of the Lord Jesus Christ, as the sole King and Head of his Church, the independence of Christ’s Church with reference to civil authority, and her sole subjection to him and his laws in spiritual things; and also in vindicating the blood-bought privileges of his Church and people. Perhaps there was no minister who exerted a more commanding influence in leading the minds of the people to clear views of duty during that eventful crisis.”

In 1849 he was translated to the Gaelic Church, Greenock, where he continued to labour until 1857, when, owing to failing health, he was induced to accept a call from Lochs, Lewis. In 1859 he lost his excellent wife, a bereavement he very much felt. She had been during many years of labour and suffering, through her piety and prudence and sympathy, a never-failing help to him, and her death greatly affected him. She died repeating the words, “I will greatly rejoice in the Lord, my soul shall be joyful in my God; for he hath clothed me with the garments of salvation, he hath covered me with the robe of righteousness, as a bridegroom decketh himself with ornaments, and as a bride adorneth herself with her jewels.” Desolate as he felt, he but the more braced himself up for his work, and in the evening of his day he was the more abundant in his labours for his Master.

He remained at Lochs until 1866, although his strength was wholly unequal to the work devolving on him in so wide a district (that parish being equal in extent to some Lowland counties), when he accepted a call to Carloway, a congregation in Lewis more easily worked than Lochs. Here, in the midst of growing infirmities, he continued until 1871, when, finding himself no longer able to discharge with satisfaction to himself the duties of his position, he resigned, generously declining to retain the retiring allowance to which he was entitled from the congregation he was leaving. But although no longer minister of a congregation, he preached regularly whilst he had strength remaining; and there was reason to believe that his labours were countenanced to the very last. He entered on his rest after ten days of much suffering, on the 9th of October 1876. On the Thursday before his last illness came on he felt better, and he rejoiced at the thought of sitting once more on the following Sabbath at the Lord’s table. This however was denied him. Not long before he had preached a precious sermon from the text, “Thy sun shall no more go down, neither shall thy moon withdraw itself; for the Lord shall be thine everlasting light, and the days of thy mourning shall be ended;” and now, after a few days of suffering, this promise was beyond any doubt fulfilled in his experience, and he took his place “Where congregations ne’er break up, And Sabbaths have no end.”

Mr McRae’s power as a preacher was very remarkable. In a notice that appeared of him elsewhere, it has been said of his preaching, that it “produced effects on his hearers such as no modern preaching except Chalmers’ was known to produce.” And there is no exaggeration in that statement. His appearance as he presented himself before a congregation at once arrested attention; it suggested to the hearers the thought that this was a messenger sent from God. Many in almost all parts of the world will remember services conducted by him, especially on communion Sabbaths, when he appeared with his countenance radiant, as one who had come down from the Mount of Communion; and how, by the time he had read the psalm and engaged in prayer, the congregation, often consisting of many thousands, was awed into eager attention, and throughout, an expression of delight appeared on the faces of God’s people, while the most careless were solemnized, often deeply moved. A few years before Mr McRae’s death, an aged Christian in Easter Ross, after hearing him preach, said, “I have to-day shed tears under a sermon, what I had not done since last I heard Mr McRae twenty years ago.” There are many Christian people and ministers of the gospel who will acknowledge that they owe more to his preaching than to all the other means of instruction they ever enjoyed, and who do not expect that the blank caused by his death will ever be made up for them in this world. He bestowed great pains on his pulpit preparation, although he did not commit to writing but the barest outline of his sermons.

It may interest our readers to give a specimen of the notes he jotted down before preaching. In a sermon, preached in 1872, from Romans 8:28: “And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose”, the notes are as follows:

“I. Who they are, ‘them that love God, who are the called according to his purpose.’
(Firstly) Them that love God:

Those who were not acquainted with Mr McRae in private life, understood but little the tenderness of his nature, and his instinctive shrinking from all that was mean and unworthy. His hope for eternity he gave expression to in the last letter he wrote to a member of his family, where he says, “What a meaning is in the word GRACE for such as I am. It contains everything necessary for the salvation of a sinner, leaping over mountains of aggravated rebellion, infinite in its absolute freeness. What I need is to realise this in its power and glory.”

He rests from his labours, and his works do follow him.

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 Some Northern Fathers
Rev. John Macrae, Duirinish

Author: J. M. [perhaps Principal John Macleod]
Source: The Monthly Record of the Free Church of Scotland, August, 1931

When Mr Alexander MacColl, the first Free Church minister of Duirinish, left in 1870 to succeed his friend, Mr Francis Macbean, at Fort Augustus, he was himself succeeded in his Skye charge by the worthy and solid Mr John Macrae. For well on to thirty years Mr Macrae laboured diligently and faithfully in this great congregation, and when his work came to an end he left behind him the memory of a man of God, who was a workman that needed not to be ashamed, as he rightly divided the word of truth.

I
At the outset of his ministry Mr Macrae got some friendly counsel from his namesake, who was then drawing near the end of his great and noteworthy work in the service of the Gospel, Big John Macrae of Knockbain, Greenock, and Lewis. One of the things that the veteran told his younger clansman was of a change which had come over his own outlook as the result of his life experience. In his earlier days he had been a Boanerges a son of thunder. His powerful voice was lifted loud to make rafters rock and re-echo. The lightning of the stroke of his mighty fist could “ding the pulpit into blads”. But near the end, as he reviewed his work, put in pithy words the gist of what he had learned the way in which divine truth works and in which it should be proclaimed. “Once upon a time, I thought that it was thunder that killed men; but now I have come to see that this is not the way. It is not the thunder that kills.” The excellency of the power is not from man but from God.

Mr Macrae of Duirinish, when he entered into the labours of his eminent predecessor, found a field to work that was already well tilled. It was not an easy thing to come into the succession of such an evangelical worthy as Mr MacColl. But John Macrae was a man of kindred spirits with him. He carried on a good tradition and he had about him a staff of able and willing helpers. There were two of his co-presbyters who were his special friends: Mr Galbraith was then in Raasay at the height of his powers and popularity, while in Bracadale the quiet and gentle James Ross dwelt among his own people and did his own work. They were willing yoke-fellows. All three of them were cast in the mould of the Puritan theology and were scribes well instructed in the word of the kingdom.

II
Mr Macrae was not only well versed in the Gospel, he was vigorous and lively in the presentation of his message, and his evident earnestness commended him to his hearers as he sought to impress them with the urgency of the business in which he was engaged. So there were but few of his contemporaries in the Islands and on the south-western seaboard of Ross-shire that were more welcome than he was as a preacher. His preaching was sound and searching and powerful. For a series of years his predecessor had been a yearly visitor to North Uist at Communion seasons, and had won a lasting place for himself in the affections of the Outer Islanders. In this Mr Macrae became his successor. And survivors whose memory goes back forty years and can tell, and they do tell, of the lively experimental and evangelical teaching that characterised the pulpit work of John Macrae of Lonmore.

In the treatment of bodily ailments, he was skilled, and as a man and a friend his wise counsel was much sought after. So he was pastor and friend and physician. When the infirmities of age assailed him, he retired from active work and retired to his native district. This was the parish of Glenshiel which lies besides the beautiful Loch Duich. There his excellent and beautiful brother, Duncan, was an outstanding witness for his Lord. They were the worthy sons of a worthy mother, in whose footsteps they both walked.

III
During his preparatory course Mr John Macrae was for some time the teacher of the Free Church school at Altandubh in Coigach, in the parish of Lochbroom. For a good part of his stay there his mother came to live with him and his brother visited him also, The memory of their stay in Coigach long persisted. In those old days when George Macleod was the princely pastor of the congregation of his widespread parish, which was as extensive as was many counties, the Communion services that he held at Ullapool used to draw huge congregations. Duncan Macrae used to attend them all the way from Letterfearn. He told some of his intimates of one of those seasons that stood out in his experience and memory. Night after night, when his host and his fellow guests had fallen asleep, he rose and unperceived made his way to his place for private prayer. This was under a bridge at the Braes of Ullapool, where in the dry summer months he found a place of retirement. There in unbroken fellowship with his Lord, for four nights on end, he poured out his heart in prayer and such was the spiritual refreshing that fell to his experience that, as he said, he felt only a few moments of difficulty from sleep in the public services for four successive days. The believers of his day had great days of Gospel preaching, and they at times enjoyed great nearness to heaven. When his brother John set his face to study for the ministry Duncan sought to try him, to assure himself that John was as impressed with the weight and the reality of the things of God that he might look upon him as one that was called indeed to the work of the Gospel. The test satisfied him that his brother was indeed called. Thus two worthy brothers were brothers in the flesh and in the Lord who were a strength to one another. They have left behind them a fragrant memory.

In the days of Mr Macrae’s ministry in Duirinish the Free Church as a body was sadly divided owing to the shifty policy of those who in 1900 definitely left their moorings. Mr Macrae adhered steadfastly to the old principles of the Reformed Church of Scotland, to the Constitution of the Free Church, to the Disruption witness, and he kept his people informed of how things were moving. When the day of testing came, though he had run his race, they showed how they responded to the care taken to inform and to teach them. His congregation remains to this day a monument to the faithful labours of its pastors; and among these an honourable place belongs to John Macrae.

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 Patrick Boyle Mure MacReadie of Perceton

Author: Rev. Thomas Main, D.D., Edinburgh
Source: Disruption Worthies: A Memorial of 1843, page 377

It was not possible for one to know Patrick Boyle Mure Macredie without receiving a very deep impression of the soundness of his judgment, the extent of his information, the warmth of his heart, and the depth of his piety; and though from constitutional diffidence he was not fitted for debate, and never entered the arena in the “ten years’ conflict,” yet from his great moral worth, and his high tone of Christian consistency, he was of great service to the Disruption cause, and his name must ever rank high among Disruption Worthies.

He was born at Warriston, near Edinburgh, on the 28th of September 1800. His father was Thomas Mure, Esq. of Warriston. His mother was the eldest daughter of the Honourable Patrick Boyle of Shewalton. He had the misfortune to lose both his parents in very early life; but he came under the care of his maternal grandmother and uncle at Shewalton, as well as of his mother’s sister, Mrs Smollet of Bonhill, at Cameron House; and it was one of the enjoyments of his later life to recall the happy days he spent there. He was one of a large family. George, his elder brother, was in the Grenadier Guards, and carried the colours at Waterloo. Thomas, his younger brother, entered the navy, and died of fever in the fatal Irrawady.

Patrick, destined for the Bar, entered the University of Edinburgh in 1812, and passed with credit and approbation through the usual curriculum of the Arts Classes, as well as those of the Law. In 1822 he was one of nineteen who passed Advocate—seven of them on the same day, among whom were Sir Charles Ferguson of Kilkerran, Mr Hog of Newliston, and Lord Neaves, who alone survives.

Eager in the pursuit of knowledge, and honourable in his whole bearing and deportment, Mr Mure was still a stranger to the saving grace of the gospel. In those days Moderatism prevailed in the pulpit. In many parts of the country the proclamation of a free salvation, through the atoning blood of the Lamb, was the exception and not the rule. Towards the close of 1822 he begins to take note in his diary of the sermons he heard. The preaching of Dr Andrew Thomson produced a powerful impression on his mind; but it was chiefly through the ministry of Dr Henry Grey that he was brought to a knowledge of the truth. Under date 21st December of that year, he writes: “Heard two sermons from Mr Grey; like his preaching very much; first time.” March 2. 1823— “Heard an excellent sermon from Mr Grey, from Exodus 12:42. It is a night much to be remembered,” &c. To this he has appended, at a later date, “This sermon, if I remember right, caused me to consider if ever I could speak of such a day.” March 21— “Fell in with a tract on the work of the Holy Spirit, which taught me some things of which I was ignorant.” May 18— “Received at church deeper alarm—driven almost to despair. How much I have been changed this last week!—despair, little sleep. I am wretched; everything appears a dream.” May 21— “I called to-day on Mr Grey; received by him very kindly. I go home with much joy and peace, but my joy like the crackling of thorns—the joy of nature at seeing a hope.” Pages might be filled with most interesting extracts, which reveal the struggle that was going on within—his eager thirst for the word, and the delight he had in the ministry of Mr Grey. His eldest sister was of great service to him at this eventful period of his life; and though for a season he was distressed with doubts and fears, yet these eventually passed away, and he settled down into that child-like repose in the Saviour that continued unbroken to the end. From this time forward he became a daily and systematic student of the Bible, availing himself of all the helps he could obtain. He soon afterwards became a Sabbath-school teacher, and his diaries reveal how deep was the interest he took in his class, and how diligently he prepared himself for it. When Dr Chalmers was appointed to the Divinity Chair, like many others who were non-theological, he attended his lectures, and caught the enthusiasm for theological inquiry. Church history became a favourite study; and he set himself to acquire a knowledge of Hebrew, that he might be able to read the Old Testament Scriptures in the original tongue.

For ten years of his Edinburgh life, he and his life-long friend, Alexander Dunlop, occupied the same apartments, and there can be no doubt that his intimacy with one so versed in ecclesiastical law could not fail to awaken his interest in ecclesiastical affairs, and this must have been deepened by the part he took in connection with the two settlements at Dreghorn. Twice over within the space of two short years that unfortunate parish was subjected to protracted litigation before the ecclesiastical courts, and in both Mr Mure was employed as counsel on behalf of the heritors and people. In the spring of 1830 a licentiate was presented, who was suspected of holding unsound views in regard to the sinless humanity of Christ. A libel was prepared, and evidence led. The General Assembly of 1831 found the libel proven, and the presentation was set aside. An acceptable appointment followed; but as the health of their new minister was extremely delicate, the people of Dreghorn trembled lest he should pass away before some other vacancy had occurred in the patron’s gift, for it was known what name stood next on the patron’s list. Their fears were realised—in the spring of 1834 their pastor died, the obnoxious presentation was issued, and the parish was plunged anew into conflict. This was the memorable year of the Veto Act, and the peculiarity in the case of Dreghorn was that the Act was passed betwixt the time of the issuing of the presentation and the moderation of the call. On all hands it was admitted that the special provisions of that Act could not apply; but forasmuch as that Act declared “that it is a fundamental law of this church that no minister should be intruded on a congregation against the will of the people,” the parishioners very naturally held that respect should be had to this fundamental principle in the settlement of the minister of Dreghorn. On the day of the moderation, the call was signed by very few, while the great majority objected to his settlement. The Presbytery decided in favour of the people, and the case was brought up by appeal to the next General Assembly; after a keen discussion, by a majority of one, the presentee was rejected. The people went home rejoicing in the victory they had won, but it was short-lived. It turned out that, in answer to the name of a gentleman who was not present, some one had voted in their favour. How it occurred, and by whom it was done, was never discovered. It was believed to have been accidental. It was most unfortunate for the people; but for this, the votes being equal, they would have obtained the benefit of the casting vote of the Moderator, but from this, in the peculiar circumstances, they were precluded, and it was held that no decision had been given. This involved the delay of another year. The whole question was re-argued in the General Assembly of 1836, when it carried by a majority of thirty-one in favour of the presentee, who was intruded on the parish with the usual results.

Having married the heiress of Perceton in 1835, he assumed the name of Macredie, and gave himself heartily to the discharge of the duties that now devolved upon him. In all the affairs of the county he took an active interest. An adept in figures, he was made Chairman of Finance, and from the intelligence and impartiality he brought to bear upon every question, his opinion was felt to be of value. A Conservative in politics, he threw himself with characteristic energy into every electioneering contest, and in the winter of 1854-5 he nominated Sir James Ferguson for the county of Ayr, who carried the election. Nor were his scientific studies laid aside. He became a member of the Royal Society, and other kindred institutions. He joined the British Association at its commencement, and was seldom absent from any of its annual gatherings. But while he kept himself abreast of the progress of science, he took the deepest interest in all the religious questions of the day. Having been ordained an elder in 1832, he sat in the General Assembly during nearly the whole of the ten years preceding the Disruption, and, as might have been expected, alike from his religious convictions and his Dreghorn experience, he was always found on the side of loyalty to Christ, and liberty to the people. When, in his own immediate neighbourhood, the Stewarton case arose, involving the right of the quoad sacra ministers to a seat in the church courts, he stood nobly forward in the defence, and rendered essential service to the Presbytery in the conduct of the case. True to his convictions, never wavering for a moment—neither before nor after—he left St Andrew’s Church on the memorable Disruption day; and though it brought along with it an experience which, from his sensitive nature, he keenly felt—he bore it, he outlived it, quieter times came, and it passed away.

In addition to his other duties, Mr Macredie devoted a large share ofi time and attention to the mines and the fire-clay works which he carried on. This involved him in much hard work, but success attended his efforts, and supplied him with the means of giving to the cause of Christ on a scale of liberality that is very rare: his private account-book is before me, from which I find that sometimes a fourth and sometimes a fifth of his income was consecrated to the Lord.

The welfare of those immediately under his charge lay very near his heart. At a time when the question of improved accommodation for the labouring classes had not come to the front, he built fifteen miners’ cottages, of three apartments each, for which he received a medal from the Highland Society. He taught a class of grown-up lads on the Sabbath evenings, and besides employing a missionary to labour among them, he held prayer-meetings in the cottages. When the revival of 1859-60 visited the West of Scotland, he threw himself into it with the greatest zeal, aided in building a mission hall, and, at his own expense, provided additional labourers to cultivate the field—a work which his family still continue. But his interest was not confined to his own locality. The cause of Christ in every land shared his liberality. He sowed beside all waters. One example may be given. From his frequent intercourse with the South, he found that the Westminster Catechism was scarcely known to the clergy of the Church of England. He printed a special edition of the Catechism, and sent a copy to every Episcopal clergyman.

In the summer of 1863 he was visited with a very serious illness, from the effects of which he never fully recovered. The few remaining years of his life passed quietly away. He was suffering from disease of the heart. Though it weakened, it did not confine him. He was able to conduct family worship till within two days of his death; and when no longer able to read the portion of Scripture, he continued to lead their devotions. His mind was unclouded, and his peace unbroken. On the morning of 15th April 1868 he breathed his last, leaving behind him a widow, two sons and two daughters, to revere his memory and follow in his steps.

[This Sketch should here have closed, but the appalling railway accident at Abbots Ripton, on the evening of the 21st January 1876, which plunged so many families into such deep and crushing sorrow, sent the thrill of anguish to this happy home. Among the sufferers was Thomas Mure, the eldest of the two sons. Partially injured in the first collision, he was crushed beneath the engine in the second. There for three hours he lay amid the drifting snow of that awful night. Never a murmur escaped his lips. His Christianity shone out as with a blaze of brilliancy, and his unselfishness did not fail him in death.— “Tell my mother that I die in Jesus.” “Try and help the man that is near me,” were his words to those who were kindly helping him. For two days he lingered. He sent touching and weighty messages to his friends and fellow-officers in the militia. On Sabbath the 23d he died, in the presence of his mother and sisters, who had hastened to be with him. And so there passed away, at the early age of thirty-four, one of the purest, gentlest, and most generous of the children of men. ]

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 Our Northern Fathers
Rev. Malcolm Macritchie

Author: J. M. [perhaps Principal John Macleod]
Source: The Monthly Record of the Free Church of Scotland, page

The name of Malcolm MacRitchie will call up many memories among our readers. Some there are, though their ranks are thinning, who remember to have seen him. Many more have heard of the worthy man from their parents and the generation that is no more. He was a man much beloved.

I
It is about a hundred and thirty years since Malcolm MacRitchie was born in the parish of Uig in Lewis. There his father held land from the minister and was his serving-man. Those were the days before the Evangelical Revival, which wrought such a change in Lewis. In those days the Gaelic Bible was scarcely known among the people of the Outer Hebrides, and even should it be easily accessible, there were few of them who could read it, even though it was in their own tongue. Thick darkness brooded over the islands of the west. About the year 1807 the first large edition of the Gaelic Scriptures appeared. But its appearance was one thing, its circulation another. The latter hung fire, and the reason was not far to seek. Those who might profit by it had never been taught to read. The discovery of this fact led to the setting up of the Gaelic Schools’ Society. This was set on foot in 1811, and from small beginnings its work grew until it achieved results that transformed the character and outlook of a generation.

At an early stage in the operations of this society one of its agents was sent to the parish of Uig, about 1820, and it was shortly after this date that the change which makes man a new creature came over Malcolm MacRitchie. He had received an English education at the Parish School, and now that Gaelic was taught, he was not long at the task until he could read his native language with ease. When his mind and heart were opened to take in the value of the soul and its salvation, nothing would satisfy him but that he should have a Bible of his own. The minister of the parish had one, and it has been said that there was also a Psalm Book in the parish, and perhaps another Bible. Malcolm, however, set his heart on getting one for himself. But to get one he must go to Stornoway, and that was about forty miles away from his home. When he reached Stornoway he found that the little money which he had was not enough to buy the Bible. It was on sale, it is said, at less than cost price, but the price was five shillings, and that in those days was a large sum among poor people. Malcolm had to retrace his steps. He had met with a disappointment. Soon after he returned home he was on the shore and saw a cask floating in the sea. This he brought safely to land. It was a cask of palm oil. He reported his find to the Receiver of Wrecks, and his reward was five shillings. He had now the money in hand with which to buy for himself the Word of God, and he lost no time in going off again to Stornoway, and when he came home from this second visit to the capital of his native island he was the happy possessor of a Bible of his own.

The Bible that was secured at the expense of so much toil and pains was not to be a closed book. Malcolm MacRitchie read it and read it over and over, and his father’s neighbours came to the house to hear it read. The Word of God was precious in those days. There was no open vision, for the minister whom his father served was reputed to be a Socinian. When first Malcolm came to be concerned about his soul he went to the Manse for counsel. When he was seen coming for a second visit the minister bade his servant shut the doors and windows to keep out the madman. It was reckoned by this blind leader of the blind that it was madness to be concerned about the salvation of the soul. Indeed, his own father tried to stop him from reading of the Book that he had got. This home opposition, however, he overcame by singing to his father the hundred and nineteenth Psalm from end to end. There the praises of the Word of God are set forth, and such was the effect of its witness that his father forbore from that time forth to interfere with the young man’s devotion to the Book. He saw the change that had come over his son, and was satisfied that it was the grace of God that had wrought it. He himself was but a servant, and as far as his house and land went, he was the minister’s tenant at will. And the minister took umbrage at the gatherings of the neighbours to hear the Scriptures read. He threatened to put the father out of house and home unless Malcolm should stop what he called his preachings. The father’s answer was: “You may take the land from me but you cannot take grace from Malcolm.” As to Malcolm, the minister said: “We must put salt water under his feet.” That meant that he must be exiled over the sea. It was, however, easier to say than to do this.

II
Malcolm MacRitchie was thus the first-fruits of the Awakening of Uig. His conversion took place about two years before Alexander Macleod began his much blessed ministry in the parish. Before long Malcolm was appointed one of the agents of the Gaelic Schools’ Society and was sent, among other places, to Sconser in the parish of Portree in Skye. While there he made the acquaintance of and used to visit Donald Munro, the Blind Catechist, whose work was instrumental in the Evangelical Awakening of Skye. The distance from Sconser to Bernisdale could not keep the young teacher from visiting this honoured servant of the Lord. Donald Munro ended his course in the year 1830. One who accompanied Malcolm on a visit to Bernisdale used to tell that when household worship took place at night Donald, who had of course, being blind, no Bible, gave out the chapter and recited it while his guests had their open Bibles before them, and the visitor had to say that he did not go a word aside from the text of the chapter that he recited. Malcolm’s labours as a Gaelic school-teacher were not confined to one sphere, and by the time of the Disruption he was engaged in them in his native parish. In those days there was again a shaking among the dry bones. But there came home from a world voyage one of the wandering sons of Lewis, and when he found his neighbours so much taken up with religion he set himself to oppose this work. Once when a meeting was in progress in one of the thatched houses this youth got on to the roof, and having stripped the thatch he emptied the contents of a tub of water on the leaders of the meeting. He seemed to be no promising convert. But before the interest of the Awakening passed away, this young man was himself arrested by grace. When word was brought Mr MacRitchie that Norman, for so he was called, was awakened, he lifted his two hands and said: “I told you, friends, that grace does not care where it goes.” That is exactly the truth about the grace that brings salvation.

III
Malcolm MacRitchie lived through great days. When he was still a young convert the great Awakening of his native parish began. It was later than that of the rest of Lewis, which took place in connection with the Gaelic schoolmasters and Finlay Munro. But when it came it was a remarkable movement. John Macrae of Knockbain and Lochs, better known as Big Macrae, knew the state of things in Uig well. For in the early years of Mr Macleod’s ministry there he was the parish schoolmaster, and he said that the congregation of Uig under Mr Macleod’s ministry was the finest moral spectacle that he ever saw. In this remarkable movement Mr MacRitchie took his share. He was gifted with a peculiarly sweet and attractive voice. So he was one of the leaders of congregational song one of the sweet singers in Israel. Lewis tradition long preserved the memory of the great Sabbath of the Uig Communion of 1828, when Dr Macdonald of Ferintosh preached, and the whole congregation broke down and became a Bochim. The preacher gave out some verses of a psalm to sing that the people might be stilled again and be able to hear. There were, as there still are on Communion Sabbaths in Lewis, two precentors. Of these Malcolm MacRitchie was one. The other was his brother in melody and his brother in grace, Angus Maciver, and as they sang Dr Macdonald sang behind them, and no other voices were to be heard in the vast multitude. Mr Alexander Macleod in later years would say that he found intellectual or head religion elsewhere, but he saw heart religion in Lewis. The awakening of those days was so powerful, and yet so free from excesses and wildfire, that it has seldom had its equal in the Church of God.

But when the Disruption took place there was a call for recruits for the ministry in the Highlands, and Malcolm MacRitchie felt that he was called to the work. He was now a married man with a family, and his resources were small. When he left home and paid his fare at Stornoway, he had only sixpence to go on with. Yet his Lord provided for the home folk that he left, and opened up his way so that in due course he finished his preparation for the ministry, and was ordained in North Knapdale. During his theological course, when he was a student in the class of Dr James Buchanan, that eminent and godly divine, when he dealt with matters bearing on the effectual work of God’s Spirit, was wont, before the class, to ask Mr MacRitchie’s view of things. He looked on his student as one who had seen more of the work of the Lord than many of his time.

IV
After a short ministry in Knapdale Mr MacRitchie was translated to Strathy and Halladale, where he laboured with decided success for seven years. The worthy elders of that congregation forty years ago were, some of them, the fruit of his work in the Gospel. While he was in Strathy he published a little book of hymns in Gaelic. It was the custom of the north-country folk to sing such hymns as those of Donald Matheson or Dugald Buchanan at their meetings in each other’s houses, and it was for such meetings that Mr MacRitchie published his hymns. He had a very marked strain of the Bard in his natural endowment, and his vocabulary was ample and his verse free and flowing. These hymns are not easily got nowadays. At Strathy Mr MacRitchie was the first Free Church minister, and he wielded a powerful moulding influence upon his congregation. In 1860 he was translated to his last charge, that of Knock, in Lewis, where he laboured faithfully in his great congregation until the end came about 1883.

The manse of Garrabost was an abode of godliness. His gentle like-minded wife was his helpmeet, and their family of daughters walked in their steps. Their one son shared in the same hope. He died young, having studied for the ministry. His name was John, so called for John Finlayson, who died first Free Church minister of Bracadale. Mr MacRitchie had come to know John Finlayson in the days of the Reef College. Such was the name given to the school which Mr Macleod had in Uig, with Mr Finlayson as its teacher. Its aim was to educate some of the promising young men of the congregation. Norman Maclennan, Angus Maclean, John Martin are some of the names of the pupils. They did loyal and useful service in many spheres in the Outer Hebrides. Mr MacRitchie, as a preacher, was a most eloquent evangelical. His mind was more intuitive than comprehensive, so pithy sententious sayings were characteristic of his teaching. His people looked up to him as one of the old prophets alive again, and the opposition to his settlement, which was fomented by some members of the Presbytery, he successfully lived down. The old Evangelicals of Lewis loved Mr MacRitchie, and their children’s children speak of him still.

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 Alexander MacWatt, M.A., Rothes

Author: Rev. James Hendry, M,A., Forbes
Source: Our Church Fathers: being Biographical Sketches of Disruption Fathers in and around the Presbytery of Elgin, page 53

“Many blessings on your bonny black pow, for you are weel shot in the gab.” Such was the salutation of a Highland woman to Mr. MacWatt in the early days of his ministry. The interpretation is disputed. Did she mean that like Aaron he could speak well, or that it was with the preparation of the Gospel of peace that his ready tongue was furnished? Either way her homely words hit off the popular impression of the man. So vivacious was he (one would fain use Scotch, and say lifey) that his private conversation had a constant overflow of fun and repartee, while in public discourse his eager mind hurried past all bounds to exhaust its subject and itself, till the body was bathed in perspiration and flecked with foam. “Why do you put yourself in a state like that?” one remonstrated with him. “Have sympathy with me,” he said, “I cannot help it, I am just like a bottle at the bursting.”

Yet his beginning had been in fear and trembling and bondage. When he conducted his first service, in the Church of Dyke, after license from the Presbytery of Forres, he was so nervous that he insisted on the Minister sitting in the pulpit beside him. It was at Burghead, years afterwards, but while he was still a Probationer, that his liberty came. He had been reading his sermon with a nervous jerky alternation of looking up and down, when an impatient movement of his arm sent the paper off the Bible and over the pulpit. Then he plunged and found himself borne up. He could speak, and he never read more. He delighted to tell how a woman of the Congregation described the scene. “You were just like my cow,” she said, “I had my cow at the beach the other day, and in the water, just at the edge, there was a nice tuft of grass, carried out and in a little by the motion of the water. The cow stood a long time bob, bobbing at it, just like you at your paper, till at last she made a great splash of a jump and the grass was hers.”

During his lengthened Probationer-period Mr. MacWatt acted as Tutor in Gentlemen’s families. One of his pupils was Lord Gordon of Drumearn, father of the present Member for the County. He was also a considerable time at Altyre, and had among his pupils there, Rowallan Gordon Cumming of lion-hunting fame. These two families supplemented one another in their esteem for him in a singular way. On his presentation to Rothes by the Earl of Seafield, he received from the Altyre family the gift of a fine pony and trap. When his establishment was reduced at the Disruption, that pony and trap were dispensed with – but too hastily, for they had become the more needful, inasmuch as the oversight of the Free Church cause throughout the whole Presbytery now devolved on him, the one out-going Minister. Then Mr. Gordon’s family shewed their esteem – undiminished – in the gift of another pony and trap.

He was forty years old when in 1839 he began his Ministry in Rothes, and he had forty-one years’
service before him, becoming unable for work and having a Colleague appointed only two years before the end. He was in the full vigour of his manhood when he began, and that vigour meant in him abundance of energy, and that energy devoted to the work of the Gospel with fervour of Evangelical feeling and great decision of character. There was need for all his vigour. He was not only a Minister but Doctor (he had in part studied medicine) and Lawyer, and Policeman. As for the spiritual need, such a trifle as this may serve to indicate it: The regular text by the regular preacher on the yearly thanksgiving Monday after Communion had for years been Esther 7:10, ‘So they hanged Haman, &c.’ Or take this which will also serve to shew the decided way in which the new Minister could take a bull by the horns. Big Sabbath parties were then in vogue. One hospitable lady insisted on the Minister joining her party after forenoon Service. He sought to excuse himself on account of his Sabbath School. She engaged to let him off in time for the School. So he went, and found the farmyard full of gigs and riding-horses, whose owners had not been at church, and such a company assembled as was certain to become more than boisterous in their afternoon and evening’s fellowship. Dinner was served, and the Minister was asked to say grace – which he did, but in such fashion and at such length that (as the story is told) “their soup would not have burned their mouths ere the grace was done.” Without sitting down, Mr. MacWatt left the room and went home – and that was the end for one generation of Sabbath parties in the Parish of Rothes.

The preparation made for the Disruption, so far as it has left an impression on the popular memory, consisted in a series of vigorous sermons on Isaiah 27:4, “Who would set the briers and thorns against me in battle,” one effect of which was that, at the Spring Communion of 1843, a number of the Members withdrew from the Communion. The greater part of the Congregation however came out with the Minister the following month. The Proprietor would give neither site nor stones from his estate for a Free Church, but it had been so provided that a worthy man who had a long lease of a feu in the High Street should be willing and able to sublet part of it, and that the lady of Glen-Rothes Estate should furnish stones to build. Bye and bye the Earl of Seafield gave a site for a Manse. “I am a little man in stature,” Mr. MacWatt said, “and therefore I must get up on a hill.” So it was that before ’43 he got a new E. C. Manse built on one beautiful knoll, and the F. C. Manse afterwards on another knoll equally pleasant for situation.

After 1843 he was for a time a Member of Elgin Presbytery, but he so exerted himself to minister to the Free Church adherents in the neighbouring parishes that in due course he had the satisfaction of seeing the Aberlour Presbytery fully reconstituted. Much of this work was done however by open-air services, and the exposure to over-heating and subsequent chill which these involved for one of his perfervid temperament brought on a malady which greatly pained his later years, although nothing could quench the resolution of spirit in which – pain or no pain – he insisted on fully discharging his duty. After the toils of the Disruption passed, the only movement that to any extent affected the routine of his work was that connected with the Revival Meetings begun by Mr. Hay McDowall-Grant of Arndilly. With that movement in its earlier stages he was in full sympathy, but not so with its later methods and spirit. One day he sat on the Arndilly lawn behind an English Missioner who, being aggravated with the apparent stolidity of his audience, turned on Mr. MacWatt with the unadvised utterance that if these people had hearts at all they would break under such an appeal as he had been making to them. “Nay,” was the reply, “you must break their heads with truth before you can get their hearts broken.” Another movement – that of Total Abstinence – secured his adherence, and put him at times on his mettle as a guest in the houses of the local gentry. But few were better able than he to turn the inconvenient laugh off himself. “Here is some very choice wine, Mr. MacWatt,” said a hostess, “which I have got specially for you, and you must do me the honour of trying it.” As he continued to excuse himself, another guest, Bishop Eden, made the remark that in default of Mr. MacWatt, he would be pleased to show his appreciation of her ladyship’s provision. But the Bishop had failed to measure the Presbyter he was meddling with. With beaming face and twinkling eye the latter passed up the decanter and the rejoinder, “Yes, certainly, for it won’t be the first time the Evil Spirit has been in Eden.” Such flotsam and jetsam it is that one now finds on the surface of memory, when the weightier matters of his many years of profitable service are in their details necessarily forgotten; but it is not forgotten by the good folks of Rothes, that all the many years were characterised by an unmistakable spiritual earnestness and by an unfailing helpfulness and kindliness which secured their affection to the last, and because of which his name keeps a full measure of honour among them. The greatest of all his services, so far as the memory of the living delights to dwell on it – it may be because it was the service which they, being then in youth, could best appreciate – was his Sabbath School Work. He started that innovation – a Sabbath School – immediately on his settlement. He himself was both Superintendent and Teacher. To some small extent he used the service of others, but for the most part he did the teaching and catechizing himself in one big class, and with the result that for years the attendance at school was equal to the ordinary Church attendance. The intellectual and spiritual stimulus received from that School-discipline is still spoken of with the warmest acknowledgment of indebtedness even by those for whom the fulness of the flow of his preaching tended to become too satisfying. Is there not a too satisfying provision of preaching now-a-days? The Adults are wasting the Minister’s strength, while the school children can often get none of it. Meanwhile religious instruction decays from the Public School, and complaint is made of growing religious indifference. Would not a dozen years Ministerial teaching and catechizing of every child in a Sabbath School after Mr. MacWatt’s style be a hopeful remedy? Then let the Minister’s relief for this work come by his second preaching being always by exchange, and to make this more possible, let re-union be hastened, for the present system at once tends to over-satiate the adults with one man’s thoughts and in too many cases to imperil the future by defrauding the children throughout their time of greatest receptivity of their due half share of the Minister’s Service.

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 John Maitland

Author: Benjamin Bell, Esq., F.R.C.S.E., Edinburgh
Source: Disruption Worthies: A Memorial of 1843, page 389

It is difficult to convey to a younger generation an adequate idea of the remarkable manner in which Scottish minds, hearts, and consciences were possessed and moved during the Disruption period. Most of those who, at the time, were old enough to understand what was going on, and had already given themselves to the Lord, felt, as by a religious instinct, that the question at issue was a vital one—was in reality and essentially the same question which has been contested on divers fields in all ages of the Church: “Shall the Lord Jesus Christ, or shall He not, rule in and over His own house?” or, in other words, “Shall any earthly or temporal authority be suffered to interpose between Him and His true church, His body, His bride, His believing people?”

If the religious instincts of one party were clear and unhesitating there was a corresponding unanimity on the side of their opponents, who, not appreciating the religious aspects of the question, allowed themselves to be swayed by political sentiments, by a constitutional dread of change, and perhaps, too, by an overweening estimate of the importance of State support.

In trying to recall that momentous period, we must remember that it had been preceded by, and was in fact the natural outcome of, a remarkable season of religious awakening and revival. Many young persons, just entering on the serious responsibilities of life, had shortly before received a baptism from above; a constellation of men, so to speak, all born about the same time in the early years of the century, had risen, specially prepared and fitted to take up and carry forward the ancestral testimony handed down by Knox, Melville, and Henderson, and latterly maintained by Sir Henry Moncreiff, by the elder < href="https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=njp.32101042858496&view=1up&seq=214">McCrie, by Thomson and Chalmers; and it seemed as if a glorious work was in store for the Church of Scotland, under the fostering care of a recently reformed, a liberal and paternal government. The cause of Establishments had virtually triumphed, in spite of a formidable assault, conducted with great ability and earnestness for several years by the nonconformists of both England and Scotland, while a scheme of church extension, conceived on the most enlightened principles by Dr Chalmers, was pressed upon the mind of his countrymen with that burning eloquence and enthusiasm which already made him the acknowledged leader of a third Reformation. But this splendid prospect was not to be realised in the manner which man ignorantly anticipated. It was to be learned once more, as events thickened during the “ten years’ conflict,” that the great Head of the Church had higher and more comprehensive lessons to teach than His servants had imagined. He shewed them that the politicians and legislators of this world will not tolerate that spiritual independence which He claims for His bride, and that State support can be obtained only by her submitting to unwarrantable limitations of that blood-bought inheritance. The controversy which commenced, as is well known, with the comparatively small question of how the scriptural choice and call of ministers might be reconciled with the law of Patronage, unjustly restored to the statute book by the Act of Queen Anne, raised, in rapid succession, a series of questions still more vital to a church of Christ, until it became too obvious to be doubted, that unless a legislative enactment could be obtained, recognising the claims of the Church in a full and satisfactory manner, no alternative was left to her but to abandon her connection with the State, and trust to the providence of her divine Head, who, having the hearts of men in His hand, can incline them to give what is needed of their worldly substance for the maintenance and extension of His own cause and kingdom.

The sacrifice was made on the 18th of May 1843, and the greatness of it we can hardly realise. A few considerations may help us to do so in some degree. Chalmers himself, backed by many of those whom he had inspired with his enthusiasm for State endowments and an Established Church, felt the sacrifice in giving up the splendid purpose so long and ardently cherished, when it could no longer be carried out, without a still greater sacrifice of principle, and without disloyalty to the Lord Jesus Christ; hundreds of ministers resigned for the same reason their charges, and with their families abandoned, at the call of duty, the pleasant homes in which they had reasonably hoped to spend their lives; professors had to leave their posts of time-honoured influence in the universities, and to undertake, amid new surroundings, the theological training of students, who in great numbers flocked to them with youthful ardour and confidence; all the missionaries of the Church cast in their lot with the faithful minority, and, of course, they and their work in foreign parts had to be maintained by contributions from a willing people, already burthened with many anxieties at home; while parish schoolmasters—and these the best—whose sympathies were on the same side, justly claimed similar support. In short, the whole machinery of the Church of Scotland needed to be set up afresh, so great was the Disruption in its results, so real and deep-seated were the religious convictions which called for the sacrifice. History can now tell that the demands which all these changes made on the liberality of the faithful people of Scotland, were responded to in a manner so remarkable as to prove emphatically that they too considered the question at issue to be one of vital and religious moment. So indeed it was; and no lower considerations could have sustained the nascent Free Church in the crisis through which she had to pass. The hand of God was visible in the Disruption; and on looking back, after thirty-three years, the worthies of that eventful period are now seen, when most of them are gone to their reward, to have been specially chosen, endowed, and equipped for the work which each had to accomplish. Who that witnessed these men and their arduous labours with a sympathetic interest in the struggling church of his fathers, can ever forget the glad sense of relief, the hopeful enlargement of heart, the gratitude to God which prevailed on every hand, recalling vividly those early pentecostal days which we read of in the second chapter of the Acts.

In making these preliminary remarks, we have not lost sight of John Maitland, but have been trying to explain those deep convictions which underlay his quiet energy and zeal, rendering him in great measure the useful man he was in his generation.

The fourth son of the late Sir Alexander Gibson Maitland, Baronet of Clifton Hall, county of Edinburgh, he was born on the 17th of January, 1803. We do not possess many particulars of his boyhood and youth, but old surviving friends speak of him as being then the same sensible, well-conducted, and reliable person that he continued to be during his subsequent career. At what period he came under serious and saving impressions is not known; but he shewed in early manhood what side he had taken, by devoting himself to Sabbath-school teaching and other occupations and duties of like significance.

When the time came for choosing a profession, following his own natural bias, he became an accountant in Edinburgh, a calling which he followed on his own account for many years with reputation and success. Latterly he was associated in business with his future brother-in-law, Mr William Wood, C.A., a gentleman of like mind and kindred tastes. Mr Maitland’s professional aptitude and benevolence led him at an early period to take a deep interest and a very influential part in the organization and development of the National Security Savings Bank. We are informed on good authority, that by devising a method whereby all the numerous small accounts of such useful institutions could be brought annually to an exact balance, he solved a difficulty which had previously stood in the way of their success, and made the Edinburgh Savings Bank a model for others throughout the country. The institution has now grown to such large dimensions, and its admirable management has been so prolific of good elsewhere, that it would be difficult to overestimate these early services of Mr Maitland.

During the years of public earnestness and anxiety of which we have already spoken, our friend was no idle onlooker; but like his contemporary and brother-in-law, the late Mr James Hog of Newliston, stood by the Church of Scotland with unwavering firmness in the time of her trials, and when the Disruption came, like him, “turned from the remaining Establishment with the most melancholy aversion.” Is it conceivable that either of these earnest calm-thinking men, had they lived to the present day, could possibly have entertained a thought of retracing their steps—even with Patronage abolished—until the General Assembly of the Established Church, which then “bowed in the dust, and echoed the very words of the Civil Courts, declaring the solemn sentences of the Church to be ‘null and void,'” had, as a preliminary, acknowledged its unfaithfulness, and endorsed the Claim of Rights presented by the Free Church of Scotland?

From the very first Mr Maitland threw himself with heart and soul into that round of active labour which an event so momentous demanded from all who would help the Free Church in her emergency; and his business capacity, his soundness of judgment, his social position, made him a most valuable and a trusted coadjutor. He became a deacon in 1843, and in 1846 an elder, in Free St George’s, Edinburgh, and being thus in the centre of affairs, was enabled to render much effective service. His professional talents were at all times available; and no man probably bestowed more earnest and successful thought than he did upon the general Sustentation Fund and other financial departments of the Church. Several able pamphlets, remarkable for clearness, terseness, and pith, did a great deal towards enlightening the minds of those who were mainly responsible, and inaugurating those principles of distribution which have rendered the Sustentation Scheme so eminently successful, and made it a model, probably, to other self-supporting churches in the future. [18] These exertions of Mr Maitland were very disinterested in the eyes of those who could duly appreciate them, inasmuch as they partially estranged towards him not a few friends in the upper classes of society, with whom he had been associated by family relationship.

In the year 1850, when the public office of accountant to the Court of Session was created, he was nominated by the Crown to fill it; and the appointment was all the more honourable and gratifying, that it was conferred without solicitation made or influence exerted on his behalf. He filled the position for fifteen years, until the day of his death, and the admirable manner in which the duties were discharged fully justified the confidence reposed in him. His public responsibilities did not preclude the performance, and that very efficiently, of those duties which devolved upon him as a private Christian and an office-bearer in the Church. Although frequently a member of the General Assembly, he was not in the habit of addressing the house, because his inclination, perhaps his talent, did not lead him in that direction; but a more intelligent, a more shrewd and trustworthy adviser, was not to be easily found, and there was something too in his appearance, in his handsome countenance and aristocratic bearing, which made him a conspicuous member of the court.

He was a director of the Commercial Bank and of the North British Insurance Company, both positions indicating unmistakeably the value attached, by competent judges, to his good sense, his knowledge of affairs, and his business habits. It would be no easy task to enumerate the many other fields of usefulness in which any spare time at his disposal found occupation. One or two may be specially noted — the Home Mission operations of the Free Church, and everything connected with the reparation of those breaches which the shock of the Disruption had occasioned. In the building of churches, of manses, of schools, he took a very warm interest; and the extent of his contributions in such cases was remarkable, considering his means, and only to be accounted for by the strength of religious principle which animated him, and by the good scriptural habit, early formed, of setting apart a fixed portion of his income for philanthropic and Christian objects. In this matter he was, so to speak, a reformer before the reformation,—his sagacity shewing him how greatly the pecuniary means needed for the promotion of these great causes would be multiplied, were systematic giving the rule, and not the exception.

A few years before his death, Mr Maitland eclipsed all his previous benefactions, by building on a most eligible site, which he had secured in close proximity to the New College, very commodious and handsome premises for the various offices of the Church, including a spacious hall of elegant proportions, worthy of the metropolitan Presbytery. Although the Church handed over to him the former less suitable offices in Frederick Street in part exchange, this munificent gift, erected primarily at his own expense, must have cost him betwixt five and six thousand pounds. The whole Church was thus placed under great obligations to him, and will always associate his memory with that substantial and noble structure. An excellent portrait of the donor, by Mr Norman Macbeth, graces the Presbytery Hall; and we may here mention that another portrait, in full length, by Sir John Watson Gordon, has been placed in the principal room of the adjoining National Security Savings Bank, as an expression of the value attached to his long services there by the directors of that institution.

Mr Maitland’s last illness was a rapid one, and, as he usually enjoyed good health, and seemed to possess a robust constitution, his death came with sudden and stunning surprise on his numerous friends and the public at large. On Tuesday, 29th August 1865, he attended to his official duties in apparent health. Returning in the afternoon to his residence— that summer at Swinton Bank, near Peebles—he complained of what, for the three following days, appeared to be an influenza cold. On Saturday, however, this illness assumed a more serious aspect; and, with occasional interruptions of his consciousness, he sank beneath the attack, and on Wednesday, 6th September, breathed his last. He was buried in the Grange Cemetery, near the grave of Chalmers, by the north wall, where Graham Speirs, Andrew Agnew, Hugh Miller, James Miller, and other good and true men have also found a resting-place.

Instead of attempting any summary of our own, it seems fitting to incorporate with this short notice the following tribute to his memory which Principal Candlish, who knew him well, delivered from the pulpit of St George’s on the forenoon of 1st October 1865:

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 Angus Makellar, D.D.

Author: Rev. John Thomson, D.D., Paisley
Source: Disruption Worthies: A Memorial of 1843, page 397

Angus Makellar

The Rev. Dr Angus Makellar of Pencaitland was a native of the county of Argyll. As to his parentage and the place of his birth, as well as his early history, his university studies, and the exact date of his receiving licence to preach the gospel, we have been unable to obtain accurate information. But there can be no doubt that he was “brought up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord,” and gave decided indications of early piety, and of his desire to dedicate himself to the Lord’s service in the work of the holy ministry. He was born in the year 1780, and died at Edinburgh in 1859, in the seventy-ninth year of his age, and the forty-eighth of his ministry. As he received in 1835 his degree of D.D. from the University of Glasgow, it is probable that his literary and theological studies had been prosecuted there.

His first pastoral charge was the parish of Carmunnock, in the immediate neighbourhood of Glasgow. There he was ordained in the year 1812; and at a time when evangelical preaching in the Established Church was comparatively rare, he soon attracted notice, and won esteem and regard, by his full and faithful proclamation of the gospel, and by his earnest and devoted efforts to win souls to Christ, and to advance His cause and kingdom. It was there that he formed the acquaintance and gained the affections of her who was afterwards to be his life companion, and whose decided piety, amiable character, singular sweetness of temper, and readiness to every good work, rendered her a most suitable helpmate to her like-minded husband, and made religion so attractive to all who came within the sphere of her influence. She was the eldest daughter of William Stirling, Esq. of Keir, near Stirling.

In 1814, after a ministry of between two and three years at Carmunnock (where he was succeeded by the Rev. Dr Patrick Clason), he was translated to Pencaitland, in Haddingtonshire; and in about two months thereafter, he was united in marriage to Miss Helen Stirling. At that time, and for some years after, East Lothian was under the reign of a cold Moderatism, and in most of its pulpits the gospel of the grace of God was supplanted by a frozen and dead morality. The chief exceptions were the pulpits of the patriarchal Mr Innes of Yester, who for sixty-one years held forth faithfully, in that parish, the word of life; and of the able and venerable Dr Daniel Wilkie of Yester, whose earnest and happy Christianity told with great power upon all who knew and heard him.

It was in the year 1831 that the writer first became acquainted with Dr Makellar; and he looks back, with much interest, to the friendship with him which he had ever after the privilege of enjoying, and the many happy days he spent under his hospitable roof. Of him it might be truly said, that he “walked within his house with a perfect heart;” and that what he was, as seen by the outside world, that he was also in his own house at home. When any new phase of the “ten years’ conflict” appeared, his like-minded brethren were summoned to Pencaitland; and most readily did they obey the call, and consult and pray together as to the measures to be adopted for maintaining the Church’s independence against the encroachments of the civil courts. To him they all looked up as their leader and counsellor, and they often had cause to admire his remarkable wisdom, his steadfast adherence to principle, and his entire freedom from everything like bitterness, or evil-speaking against those of opposite views. His influence with all classes, and especially with the higher classes, was as great as it was well deserved; and it was no small trial to him to be compelled to adopt a course which they disapproved. But none of these things could move him from his path of duty, or cause him to hesitate or falter in his attachment to the vital principle of Christ’s sole Headship over the Church, and her spiritual independence under Him alone, and her right to be free from the coercion and control of civil courts, in conducting her own spiritual affairs. While he and his brethren were resolutely opposed to the abuses of patronage in the Church, yet it was not the mere existence of patronage, but the Church’s right to her blood-bought freedom, that, in their opinion, formed the real essence and ground of the controversy.

In 1840, the universal esteem and confidence with which Dr Makellar was regarded led to his appointment as moderator of the General Assembly. It was a critical period of the Church’s conflict with the civil courts, but he was fully equal to the occasion, and gained the respect of all by his Christian courtesy and gentlemanly deportment, as well as by his indomitable firmness and his steadfast adherence to his cherished principles. As to his conduct on that occasion, and his eminent qualifications for such an important office, we may quote the following passage from a speech of Dr Duff, on proposing him a second time for the moderatorship of the General Assembly. He said:

To those who enjoyed Dr Makellar’s intimate friendship, and partook of his hospitality, this last-mentioned circumstance will seem very characteristic of him, and in full harmony with his own invariable custom in the Manse. It was his practice, after dinner, to have the Bible produced at his own table, and to read a portion of it in the hearing of his guests. Nothing could be better fitted to give a right tone to the subsequent conversation, and to maintain the character of a Christian household, which should ever be “sanctified by the Word of God and by prayer.”

As the day of the Disruption drew near, the writer (who then acted as Clerk of the Presbytery of Haddington) was necessarily much in the society of Dr Makellar, in making arrangements rendered necessary by the immediate prospect of that memorable event; and in all these it was impossible not to admire his clear and calm judgment, the practical wisdom of his suggestions, and the intelligent and intense interest he manifested in the work of up-building the Free Church in East Lothian. The sacrifice of pecuniary emoluments was the smallest part of the trial to the out-going ministers; but the quitting of the manse, with its tender associations and memories, the renunciation of worldly position and status, the alienation of some, and the bitter opposition of others, few though they were in most cases—these were extremely painful to a sensitive and honourable mind. But no hesitation was felt by Dr Makellar in making the sacrifice; and when the day of trial came, he was not found wanting, and he cheerfully obeyed the dictates of his conscience and the demands of Christian principle.

At the first meeting of the Free Presbytery of Haddington, held on the 4th June 1843, Dr Makellar was chosen moderator, and “constituted the Presbytery in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, the only King and Head of His Church.” He stated, as the minute bears, that “he had procured a large granary, and also a site for a new church at Fountainhall to the mansion-house of which he, in due time, removed his family. He presided also at seven subsequent meetings of Presbytery in July, August, September, October, and November, when his counsels were invaluable in rebuilding the ruined walls of our Jerusalem, and in providing for the due celebration of Christian ordinances throughout the county, while he himself “preached in various places by appointment of Presbytery.” Although those, who resigned their office in large towns and wealthy congregations, rendered most signal services to the Church at this eventful period, yet their labours, and difficulties, and privations, supported as they were by numerous flocks and influential laymen, can scarcely be compared with those of their brethren in country districts, where the chief labour often devolved upon the minister himself, and where the difficulty of obtaining suitable dwellings was often very great.

At the meeting of the General Assembly at Glasgow, in October 1843. Dr Makellar was unanimously appointed chairman of the Board of Missions, in room of Mr Alexander Dunlop, who resigned the office, after having for some time ably discharged its important duties. As these duties were “sufficient to occupy his whole time,” and rendered it necessary that Dr Makellar should reside in Edinburgh, he was released from his pastoral charge; and his son, the Rev. William Makellar, was elected and ordained as his successor.

Soon afterwards Dr Makellar removed to Edinburgh, and devoted his whole heart and energies to the cause of Missions. At such a time, when all the foreign missionaries of the Establishment declared their adherence to the Free Church, and when so many as between 200 and 300 congregations at home were unsupplied with ministers, it was most important that one possessed of his sagacity, and zeal, and aptitude for business, should be placed at the head of the Mission Board; and it is well known that his services were of the greatest value in supplying the means of grace at home and abroad, in promoting and fostering a spirit of large-hearted liberality among the people, and in consolidating the extensive operations of the Free Church in so wide a mission field. As to this Dr Duff truly said:—

In the year 1852, the General Assembly unanimously called Dr Makellar a second time to preside over their deliberations as Moderator. All who were present at that Assembly cannot but remember the remarkable ability and tact, as well as the urbanity and self-command, which he displayed in difficult circumstances. Painful cases were brought before the Assembly, and there were keen discussions, and considerable differences of opinion, on various subjects, such as the right ordering of the Sustentation Fund; and great fears were entertained of unpleasant collisions. But, owing in no small degree to the Moderator’s wisdom, impartiality, and unfailing courtesy, these fears were happily disappointed. There was, however, one memorable event which occurred at that Assembly, and which greatly rejoiced the heart of the Moderator, viz., the consummation of the Union between the Synod of United Original Seceders and the Free Church of Scotland, warranting as it did the hope that ere long all the dispersed of our Israel would be gathered into one. In reference to this, the words of Dr Makellar, in welcoming Dr McCrie and his much-esteemed brethren, will be read with interest. He said:—

During the few remaining years of his life, Dr Makellar did not often appear in public; but he continued to give his earnest attention to all that pertained to the welfare of Zion, and to manifest a growing interest in the extension of pure and undefiled religion, while his example of faith and love and hope, rendered him still more a living epistle of Christ, known and read of all. By his wise counsels, by his meekness and gentleness, by his humility and charity, by his heavenly temper and conversation, by his large-hearted generosity and numerous benefactions to the worthiest objects, he continued still to nourish like the palm tree, and “brought forth fruit in old age.”

His latter end was peace and good hope. The Rev. James Dodds, of Dunbar, who frequently visited him on his death-bed, and who was among the last of his brethren that saw him and prayed with him, informs us, that he died as he had lived, in the firm faith of the gospel which he had so earnestly preached, and in the sure hope of the eternal reward. He says, that Dr Makellar was “a really good and kind man; and as long as I live I can never forget the kindness he shewed to me when I was at Humbie.” His kindness to young ministers, as many can testify, was very characteristic of him, and the benefits which he thus conferred cannot be told. But the day will declare it. Dr Makellar died at Edinburgh on the 10th of May 1859, having reached the seventy-ninth year of his age; thus passing away, as a shock of corn fully ripe, to the heavenly garner— “Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord.” His devoted partner, who was spared so long to him, died about a month after her husband. “They were lovely and pleasant in their lives; and in their death they were not divided.”

It is a cause of regret that no permanent record has been left of his pulpit addresses. Those who heard his able expositions of Scripture, and his full and earnest proclamation of the gospel, cannot but desire that one or more volumes had been published from his manuscripts.

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 Hugh Miller

Author: James Sime, Esq., Craigmount House, Edinburgh
Source: Disruption Worthies: A Memorial of 1843, page 405

Hugh Miller

Hugh Miller was born at Cromarty in 1802. After a school time which gave his friends a foretaste of the manly independence he shewed throughout life, he became a thoughtful youth, fond of reading whatever fell into his hands, and of discussing, as young men will discuss, every point in the politics or theology of the country. His early years he has described as those of “a thoughtless, careless, school boy, who proved his spirit by playing truant three weeks in the four, and his genius by writing rhymes which pleased nobody but himself,” till “in 1823 that same school boy finds himself a journeyman mason, not quite so free from care, but as much addicted to rhyming as ever.” A few years later, the gospel of Christ became the acknowledged centre, round which all his thoughts were ranged, and to which all his purposes in life paid homage. Among these purposes perhaps the most deep-seated was his resolution to become a poet. But he had the wisdom to see, that though the paths of all great writers are usually the same for the first part of the way, there is a point at which poet and prose writer branch off into different roads seldom again to meet. Before that point is reached, songs and tragedies of even more than average merit may be, and often have been, composed by a prose writer, but they are only the practice needed to fit him for his own field of literary work. In seeing this, Hugh Miller at last saw where his strength lay.

In the columns of the Inverness Courier, in 1829, he first shewed his power as a writer of prose, by five letters on the Herring Fishery. Two years later he stepped forward as the champion of the people of Cromarty in their defence of the minister, Mr Stewart, against the attempted intrusion of a neighbouring minister, whom they had not called to be his colleague, while few of them were disposed to receive him as a pastor. But the friends he had gained in his native town were anxious to lift Miller into a sphere of life more congenial to his literary tastes than that of a stone-mason. Opportunities seem to have been wanting, till, about the end of 1834, Mr Ross, then agent for the Commercial Bank, offered him a situation in the office. With the modesty of true genius, Hugh Miller hesitated before accepting the offer. A salary of sixty pounds a-year from this source was the staff he had to lean on in the battle for fame; he was married, too, in 1837. Certainly the outlook was far from cheering. But he found James Watt’s theory of the progress of genius true to the letter—when Want looks in at the door, Genius devises ways and means to keep him out. It was this apparition that roused the inborn science of Watt to a successful wrestling with the difficulties that then beset the use of steam-engines in mining; it was the same unwelcome ghost that haunted Hugh Miller, till he armed himself with literature and geology to drive Want away. But another subject quickened the power within him even more fiercely than these great themes; it was the rights of the Christian people of Scotland. In May 1839 the House of Lords delivered judgment in the Auchterarder case; in June, Hugh Miller’s letter to Lord Brougham attracted the attention of the Church, and towards the end of December he arrived in Edinburgh to become editor of the newly started Witness, an office that he continued to hold till his death on the 24th of December 1856. [19]

No one who reads the “Letter to Lord Brougham,” can fail to understand that, as soon as it saw the light, the battle between the Church and the State had entered on a new phase. A demand for four editions in as many weeks proved that an ally had joined the Church, which statesmen have often reckoned of small worth for fighting power, till they have discovered by experience the grievousness of their mistake —the public opinion of the most earnest, and not the least enlightened, among the Commons. So long as ministers and lawyers carried on the war, the fight was little more than a distant cannonade from one hill-top to another; the people in the plains below were not greatly stirred by the noise. But the “Letter to Lord Brougham” was followed by an awakening among the slumbering host; there was a putting of themselves in array—there was a growing belief that their most cherished rights were at stake. For the letter touched on matters that lay very near to the hearts of all true lovers of Scotland. Never, since the days of John Knox, had there sprung from the ranks of the people a man whose words struck home so thoroughly and so well, with a power of wit and raillery more chastened, but not less biting, than the great Reformer’s; with the same command of strong Saxon speech as his; and with a knowledge of the historical development of his country, creditable to any one, but most honourable in this self-taught stone-mason. The manliness with which he makes his bow to the great lawyer in the first few lines of the “Letter,” displays a writer thoroughly acquainted with his subject, and feeling himself on the same level as Lord Brougham in the commonwealth of letters. Then, acknowledging that the statesman’s high estimate of the political wisdom of Scotchmen is well deserved, he passes at one bound to the unavoidable conclusion that, since their politics are known to have been but an offset from their faith, much greater must be their wisdom in the latter than in the former. Why should they be reckoned unfit to choose their own ministers, if they are entitled to the highest praise for their choice of members of Parliament? “I am a plain, untaught man,” he says, “but the opinions which I hold regarding the law of patronage are those entertained by the great bulk of my countrymen, and entitled, on that account, to some little respect.” But plain and untaught though Hugh Miller was, he knew better than a Lord Chancellor that the ground on which had been fought the battles of civil liberty, not in Scotland only, but through it in all Britain, was the right of the Scottish people to choose their own ministers. Tyrants and their slaves had reft that right from them in their times of weakness; but as soon as they regained lost strength, it was always demanded back. “Liberty of rejection without statement of reasons,” in choosing ministers of the gospel, was the small fraction of the greater right put in peril by Lord Brougham’s utterances. But the lawyer had gone farther. He “ungenerously insinuated” that the object might be “to reject men too strict in morals, and too diligent in duty, to please our vitiated tastes.” Again had the great law Lord laid himself open to a thrust from his antagonist’s weapon; for all history testifies to the fact that this right of the people required of ministers “that they should be no longer immoral or illiterate;” while “the law, which re-established patronage in Scotland, formed, in its first enactment, no unessential portion of a deep and dangerous conspiracy against the liberties of our country.” And with an insight into the future, fully justified by the past, he seems to foresee what was sure to happen. “In all her after conflicts, it was not the Church that yielded to the law, but the law that yielded to the Church;” while, with the manly freedom of a man whom promises could not bribe, nor threats silence, he winds up the argument with: “We do not think the worse of our Church, my Lord, for her many contests with the law—not a whit the better of her opposers for their having had the law on their side.”

Hugh Miller has himself described the growth of his mind, from the glimmering dawn of boyhood to the full light of maturity. Here and there he has wrought into the history as much as is worth knowing of the surroundings, which helped to mould his thoughts at each step of their progress, while he climbed the steep path that led him upward from the mason’s shed to the editor’s room, from the chisel to the pen. More there should scarcely be a wish to know, unless it were given to any one to record the gradual oncoming of that terrible darkness which, for years before his untimely end, haunted his great heart with ever-gathering gloom, till at last, overwhelmed by the blackness, reason in an unhappy moment forgot her right to command. No one can read what he has written of the progress of his mind in strength and knowledge, without feeling that during these sorrowful years, and especially during his last few sorrowful days, he was as busy watching the ebb and flow of thought within him as in earlier times. But it was not ordered that he should narrate, as others have done, his wanderings to the brink of the precipice, and a gracious escape from hurling himself over—trials common to him, with many of the best and brightest of our race. Where others fought and lived, he yielded and died, under the crushing weight of years of sorrow.

But though Hugh Miller’s own pen has recorded his mental history from boyhood to manhood, it is left to others to assign him his place and to estimate his services in the greatest strife between the spiritual and temporal powers, that has raged within the bounds of the British Empire for almost two hundred years. It was not as a man of science that he figured in the fight; nor is it as a man of science that he fills a prince’s niche in the Free Church temple of fame. Unquestionably the fact, that he was a geologist of the first rank, endeared him the more to his countrymen, and made his contendings known in quarters to which the din of the strife might never have reached; while it also revealed to the world that the combatants were not impracticable church leaders, or, as it pleased even a peer to assert, a vulgar throng, but men disciplined by science and the business of life. Still, Hugh Miller’s place and work in the great battle were unusual. He was not a minister; he was not even an elder in the Church. “I never signed the Confession of Faith,” he wrote in 1839, “but I do more, I believe it.” He was the outstanding representative of a vast host, who felt that their liberties were invaded and their rights refused by the ruling classes of the day. By common consent, by an unwritten agreement, Hugh Miller stood before the world as the champion of the people’s rights. What he wrote, they read with more eagerness than any speeches delivered in the great battle. What he maintained, they backed him out in, as a fair expression of their wishes. When the oratory of the pulpit or the church court would have failed to awaken an echo in their hearts, his words of fire stirred them to joyous action. He asked what his countrymen felt they needed, and in a way that commended itself for outspoken manliness, people,” he wrote, “full of the popular sympathies—it may be of the popular prejudices.” What Chalmers was among the ministers of the Church, Hugh Miller was among the laymen, at once an expounder of their rights and a standard-bearer to rally round. That he was neither bigot nor fool, but a man of sterling common sense, was proved in 1874, when the least intelligent on the opposite side of church politics were glad to accept, as their only plank of safety from destruction, what he claimed as the heritage of the whole people, in his “Letter to Lord Brougham,” in 1839.

Of the fearlessness with which he wrote when truth and right were at stake, both friends and foes were thoroughly aware. What the Regent Morton said of John Knox may with all truth be said of Hugh Miller, “He never feared the face of man.” Compared with his country’s welfare, everything else was in his eyes lighter than vanity. Whether fighting the great battle of the Church against the State, or demanding for the people, a few years afterwards, the heritage of a truly national system of education, as it was bequeathed to them from their fathers, or with indignant scorn branding the depopulators of a great county, in his papers on “Sutherland as it Was and Is,” love to his native land breathed from every word he wrote. But it was sometimes expressed in fiercer language than men of a different way of thinking relished. Witness the manly freedom with which he handles a Lord Chancellor in his famous “Letter to Lord Brougham,” not to mention later outbursts of this inner fire. High-souled men respected the striker, even while they sought to moderate his language or to appease his wrath, for they felt that the battles of such a life as the present are not fought with blunted foils. All that was loving and kindly in his heart was stirred to its deepest depths by these good and generous friends. All the soldier-fire of his warrior nature was blown into a fiercer glow by opposition from hirelings, like “the creatures of the proprietor,” in “Sutherland as it Was and Is;” so true it is, and so sad withal, that a host of little men have often more power to vex great hearts by petty slights, than noble minds have to soothe them by respectful sympathy.

Of the freedom and power with which he hit his adversaries, not a few of them carried through life scars that nothing could efface or heal. His was neither gloved hand nor honeyed tongue. Regret for rashness, into which he was unfairly hurried by wrong reports received from smaller men, it was natural a man of his warmth of heart would not fail to feel and express. But for men who betrayed their trust, or found it convenient to call truth one thing to-day and another thing to-morrow, he had neither regard nor pity. Adherence to principle in his opponents Hugh Miller could and did respect; but “the two Mr Clarks” offered an irresistible chance to a naturalist like him of pinning to his album a specimen of transformation such as even the insect world could barely equal. Even when the dust of battle has long been laid, and slayer with slain are together sleeping in the narrow house, it is difficult for an impartial historian to deny the justice of Hugh Miller’s onslaughts and the fairness of his fighting. Others could not wield the weapons he carried, or put on the armour he wore. He struck with a might that seldom needed a second blow to complete the work; the fallen were crushed beneath a giant’s stroke, not half-slain by repeated thrusts from a pigmy’s arm. A strong love of truth, combined with an equally strong power of expression, makes a man as dangerous a foe to all dalliers with falsehood as Hector found Achilles:

Hugh Miller was not a public speaker. However quick thought may have been with him, language was slow, well weighed, and accurate. The fire, that fiercely blazed in his writings, would have been a feeble flame at the best, or an extinguished spark, on the platform. Even in private his words were few, but they were well ordered. One day he was at dinner with several friends, some of them leading men in the Free Church. Most of the conversation was absorbed for a time by a guest, whose fancy had been excited by a small hand-book on popular science, then recently published. His descriptions were entertaining enough, but they were so full that it was difficult to do more than listen. Hugh Miller had nothing to say. At last the conversation swung into a different channel. Some one told of a yachting voyage in which a young lady and a young gentleman found themselves the only two of nearly the same age in the cabin. What could be expected to result, was asked, but marriage? “As well think of Adam refusing Eve,” was Hugh Miller’s comment in reply. When Dr Whewell and Sir David Brewster were waging war with each other on the subject of “More Worlds than One,” a friend happened to express to Hugh Miller his feeling of the absurdity of supposing that, because several fixed stars may be immeasurably bigger than our earth, or even than our sun, their bulk should lead us to regard them as the seats of nobler races of beings. “Ay,” he said, “it may be comparing Newton with a whale.”

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 Rev. David Mitchell, M.A., Bangor

Author: The Editor
Source: The Monthly Record of the Free Church of Scotland, April, 1914, page 54

Many in the Free Church will regret to learn that this esteemed servant of the Master, who rendered good service to the Church in the time of her distress, passed away last month in his eighty-ninth year.

Mr Mitchell was born at Burncrana, and was educated for the ministry at Edinburgh University and in the New College there. He was first settled as minister of the Irish Presbyterian Church in 1850 in his native place. In 1877 he was translated to Kilkenny, and three years later he accepted a call to Warrenpoint, in County Down. There he laboured for twenty years, retiring in 1900, when he had attained his ministerial jubilee. Thereafter for several seasons he ministered for the Free Church at Corrie and Southend, in Arran, and also, we think, at other places. He was every where an acceptable preacher, having an excellent grasp of the truth, and an interesting and orderly method of presenting his message. He was distinctly of the sound evangelical school, taking great pains in the preparation of his discourses, and faithfully discharging pastoral duty during his sojourn in any congregation. The memories of Mr Mitchell’s ministrations in the Free Church in the days of her greatest need are altogether pleasant. One of his family, the Rev. Cuthbert Mitchell, M.A., is minister of Enniskillen, in County Fermanagh.

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 Alexander Earle Monteith

Author: Francis Brown Douglas, Esq., Advocate, Edinburgh
Source: Disruption Worthies: A Memorial of 1843, page 413

Mr Alexander Earle Monteith became a member of the Faculty of Advocates at the period when Moncreiff, Jeffrey, Cockburn, Rutherfurd, and others, shed more than usual lustre on the Scottish Bar. While intimate with these eminent men, he was more closely allied with Shaw-Stewart, Cowan, Speirs, Dunlop, Hamilton, and Mungo Brown. The friendship of this little band manifested the power of Christian companionship for good,— it greatly strengthened the influence they exercised on the Church of which they were members, as well as on general public questions;— and they maintained to the end of life mutual affection for, and mutual confidence in, one another.

Mr Monteith was born in 1793. His father was Mr Robert Monteith of Rochsoles, and his mother a daughter of Captain Earle, an officer in the army. His uncle, Mr Monteith, of Carstairs, was for some time Member of Parliament for Glasgow. He was thirteen years old when his father died, and his mother and family, not long after, came to reside in Edinburgh. In 1814 he was called to the Bar, and pursued his profession with early success. He was a fluent speaker, a man of much information and good judgment, fond of reading and of general literature; and having naturally an amiable disposition and engaging manners, he soon made his way, and his society was very generally cultivated. In 1838 he was appointed Sheriff of Fife. He had abilities and attainments to qualify him for any position to which, as a member of the Bar, he might have aspired; but, from whatever cause, he never took the position and practice of a successful leading senior counsel. This would have necessarily led to higher promotion; and even without it, the Liberal party to which he belonged might, as far as his merits were concerned, have most justly elevated him to a seat on the judicial bench. Mr Monteith faithfully and zealously discharged the duties he owed to the county over which he had been appointed Sheriff. He presided regularly in all his courts, and especially at jury trials, with marked success. He attended the county meetings, where his legal experience was of great value, and where his ability and invariable courtesy secured for his views on public and on local questions the deference to which they were so justly entitled. His courage and firmness in times of excitement and difficulty were conspicuous—they were often referred to by his friends on one special occasion of riot at Dunfermline; and the instinct with which he took and pursued the right course preserved the peace of his county in times of disturbance and disquiet, from which, during his sheriffship, it as well as other parts of Scotland was not exempt.

In several questions of general interest, Mr Monteith gave to the community gratuitously the benefit of his ability and attention. He was a member of the Royal Commission on the Scottish Universities; and it is understood he wrote the reports on those of Aberdeen and Glasgow. He served also on two other Royal Commissions, the results of whose inquiries were of great value—one on the Forbes Mackenzie Act, for restraining the evils of intemperance, and the need of a remedy, with which he was much impressed; the other, on Lunacy, and the harsh treatment then too often prevailing in private asylums. He was a member also of the General Prison Board, and took an active share in the management of the General Prison at Perth. The state of this establishment must have presented to his mind a very gratifying contrast to the condition of matters in 1836, when he and others instituted a society for remedying the evils existing in our county prisons, which were then too truly described as in many respects nurseries for crime. There was a lamentable lack of cleanliness, employment, and moral and religious instruction among the inmates; and the baneful influences of the older on the less hardened prisoners, between whom there was not much separation, is referred to in one of Miss Graham’s “Mystifications” at Tulliallan, when she says of her pretended son, “He was a gude weel-living lad afore ye sent him to bridewell.” Mr Monteith’s able and eloquent speech at the first annual meeting of the Prison Discipline Society in Edinburgh, greatly helped to draw public attention to this subject, and the society did not cease its efforts until these resulted in the present improved condition of all our prisons. Most justly in reference to all these matters did the Fife Commissioners of Supply, at their first meeting after his death, unanimously adopt a minute in very suitable terms expressive of the loss which the county had sustained.

The interest which Mr Monteith felt in the Church of Scotland, and his share in its struggles against Moderatism and Erastianism, originated with him, as with many others, in the interest which he was led to take in vital personal religion. In his younger days, with other members of his family, he was an Episcopalian. He attended Dr Alison’s church, and afterwards Bishop Sandford’s. The first of his family who adopted evangelical views was his sister, Mrs Stothert of Cargen, who was next to him in age, and he often argued with her about her new opinions. He considered himself abler than she was, yet he felt she had often the best of the argument, for “the secret of the Lord is with them that fear Him,” and “through His precepts they get understanding.” At this time he went to hear Dr Chalmers. In the sermon now well known, a character was described of great moral excellence, and as he listened, he wished his sister could be present to hear how differently Dr Chalmers judged of human nature from the way in which she did. Presently the preacher proceeded to shew, that as rebels might be just and fair in their dealings one with another, while they were traitors to their lawful sovereign, so all he had described might consist with entire alienation of the heart from God, and entire disregard of His authority. This Mr Monteith used to refer to as his first lesson in the doctrine of the depravity of human nature. But Dr Chalmers’ sermon seems to have had a wider and a deeper influence —at least it was after it that he began the regular reading of his Bible, writing down as he read what each book or passage seemed to teach, and summing up its doctrines and lessons. In this way he went through the whole of the Scriptures, and came substantially to the views which he ever afterwards held. His practice of studying the word of God is worthy of notice and of imitation. Whenever he was in doubt about anything in doctrine or practice—and the metaphysical character of his mind exposed him not a little to such doubts on religious questions—his habit was to mark down every passage of Scripture which he thought could bear in any way on the subject, and when he had the whole collected together, he read it all over, and saw to what conclusion it appeared to lead.

In his religious life, of which this proved the beginning, he used to say he as well as others was greatly helped by Mr Mungo Brown, who married his favourite sister. He left the English Church, attaching himself to the ministry of the Rev. Dr Gordon; and in process of time he became an elder in the High Church. He visited his district, and discharged the other spiritual duties of his eldership, and was year by year returned to the General Assembly, and so came to take an active interest in all the affairs of the Church.

On the important questions which then agitated the public mind and occupied the attention of the Church, Mr Monteith formed and maintained a very clear opinion. He objected to Patronage, not as anti-scriptural, but as opposed to the principles of the Presbyterian Church; and among these he very clearly stated, in his speech during a debate in 1842, “Spiritual independence and non-intrusion.” With these views, he entertained no doubt as to the right of Chapel ministers to be admitted to the courts of the Church, and as to the right of the Church to independent jurisdiction in the purely spiritual province. When these rights were assailed by the decisions of the Civil Courts, he disregarded these decisions; and when, on the other hand, the somewhat insidious compromise was proposed of giving to Presbyteries the power of judging of the objections of congregations, he foresaw the danger arising in this direction, and denounced it as inconsistent with the rights and liberties of the Christian people.

He accordingly, without any hesitation, joined the Free Church in its course in 1843; and he took an active and constant interest in all its proceedings. In consultation and in debate, both before and after the Disruption, his legal knowledge, his judgment, and his eloquence, proved of the greatest service. In some of the subjects which occupied the attention of the Church he naturally took a more active part than in others. He supported the proposal of modifying the distribution of the Sustentation Fund, so as to rescue it from the too evident perils of the simple Equal Dividend. He joined in the endeavour which, after a vain but prolonged resistance, was at last successful, for the abolition of tests in the non-theological university professorships, maintaining that the mere subscription of a formula gave no adequate security for religious character, and that a Christian legislature ought not to extend its aim beyond the provision, that nothing contrary to certain truths should be taught from the professorial chairs. On the question of a plurality of colleges, he sided with the late Principal Cunningham and others in favour of one central institution in Edinburgh. The New College, with all its arrangements—first, in the erection of the building so much admired, and then, in the selection of its professors—was a very special object of his interest and care. It was he who, on his own responsibility, and with many an anxious thought, acquired the admirable site on which it and the Free High Church now stand, and for which he knew a sum of £ 10,000 must be provided. The marble bust placed in the New College Library is a suitable memorial of his deeply cherished regard for this important Free Church institution. He annually sat in the General Assembly as one of the representatives of the Presbytery of Edinburgh, his last appearance being in 1859, when he opposed the continuance of the Chair of Natural Science. The Assembly in 1861 passed a minute embodying a sincere and universally felt tribute of respect for his memory.

In his later years Mr Monteith’s health began to give way under the result of disease of the heart, with which he knew he was afiected. In a journal which he kept he more than once referred to this, and those who were nearest to him and most intimate with him, observed the maturing and ripening for the Master’s presence, which is so often noticed in the people of God as they draw towards their end. In his case the end came sooner than his friends expected. He died on 12th January 1861. In a sermon which he preached with reference to the event, the Rev. Dr Rainy, Dr Gordon’s successor, alluded to his last visit to him but a few days before. He spoke of Mr Monteith’s calmness and humility, and the simplicity of his faith—the secret of which is probably to be found in an extract from his diary, with which this record of his worth may be suitably closed. “O God, give me grace to follow fearlessly wheresoever Thy Spirit leads me, and to listen to the softest whisper of the still small voice, and to carry about with me continually as the oil to feed the divine lamp of my soul, the self-sacrificing love of my dying and risen Saviour.”

Mr Monteith was twice married, first in 1829 to Miss Emma Clay, and afterwards in 1838 to Frances, daughter of the late General Dunlop of Dunlop, who for many years represented the Stewartry of Kirkcudbright in the House of Commons. He had two daughters, of whom only one now survives.

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 Sir Henry Wellwoood Moncreiff, Bart., D.D.

Author: Rev. Thomas Crerar, M.A., North Leith
Source: Disruption Worthies: A Memorial of 1843, page 419

Sir Henry Wellwood Moncreiff

The name Moncreiff is a familiar one on the ministerial roll of the Scottish Church. The subject of this sketch is the eighth link in a Levitical chain that has been broken only once since the days of Archibald Moncreiff, the minister of Abernethy in the early part of the seventeenth century. The great-grandson of the minister of Abernethy was Archibald, the first minister of Blackford, after the Revolution. In this parish he spent his whole ministerial life, and in his later years his son William, who afterwards became Sir William, was associated with him as his assistant and successor. Sir William Moncreiff, like his father, adhered steadfastly to the parish of Blackford, and the attachment was mutual, for, on his death, the Presbytery, the patron, and the people made very peculiar and successful efforts to have his son Sir Henry ordained as his successor. After a brief incumbency of four years, Sir Henry accepted a call to St. Cuthbert’s Church in Edinburgh, and his ministry there was of great service to the cause of evangelical religion. He ultimately fell heir to the position of the learned and saintly Dr Erskine of Greyfriars, as the leader of the evangelical minority in the Church of Scotland.

Sir James Moncreiff, the son of the minister of St. Cuthbert’s, chose the bar instead of the pulpit—a profession in which he achieved distinguished success, rose to the head of the Faculty of Advocates, and, under his title of Lord Moncreiff, has left a reputation which ranks with that of our greatest judges. But this involved no real departure from ancestral traditions and sympathies. Amid the engrossing occupations of a busy and successful career he found time to take an active part in the work of the Church, and in the history of the incidents and issues of the Ten Years’ Conflict his name will always occupy a prominent place. The great attachment which he and his lady formed for Dr Andrew Thomson induced him, even before his father’s death, to become an elder of St George’s Church, though he continued to attend in St Cuthbert’s when his father was to occupy the pulpit. The members of Lord Moncreiff’s family were brought, early in life, under the influence of a man who was preeminently successful in arousing in the minds of those who sat under his ministry an enthusiasm for the pure Gospel of Christ, and we believe that his eldest son,—the Sir Henry Moncreiff of whose life these pages present a brief sketch,—derived an impulse from Dr Thomson, which had much to do with the shaping of his future career. Other causes, doubtless, co-operated to form his spiritual character, and to turn his thoughts to the Christian ministry, but it is not the function of the writer to intrude into the sacred region of private religious experience. His task is to relate outward facts, and to allow these to speak for themselves, and suggest the spiritual facts which underlie them.

Mr Henry Moncreiff was born in Edinburgh in 1809. When he was of suitable age he was sent to the High School of his native city. There are those who still remember that he was distinguished from his fellow-pupils by the size of his bundle of books. Not content with the ordinary number of volumes, he had added an imposing Latin dictionary, which he carried daily to school. His attachment to the dictionary must have been great, for a story has floated down on the stream of tradition, that when the junior members of the Moncreiff family were asked what they would severally carry away in the event of the house taking fire, Henry declared that he would carry off the big “Ainsworth” as his special treasure.

After leaving the High School, he matriculated as a student of the University of Edinburgh, in 1823. A college friend who was intimately associated with him says that he was distinguished by his close application to study, and by a steadfast friendliness of character which never gave pain or caused disappointment, and that he was even then conspicuous for his clear intellectual perceptions and his acute reasoning powers.

In the year 1826 he left the University and went to Martley Rectory, Worcestershire, where he was associated with several other pupils under the care of the Rev. Henry James Hastings, for about two years.

Mr Hastings was a sterling evangelical clergyman of the school of Venn and Simeon; and a distinguished scholar of Trinity College, Cambridge. Private tuition was at that time preferred by many to the teaching of the public schools, and the tide of general opinion did not turn into the opposite direction till Dr Arnold had achieved eminence as Head-master of Rugby. Lord Moncreiff accordingly followed the example of other members of the upper classes, and sent his son to Martley Rectory at the critical period of his education.

In April, 1827, Mr Moncreiff was matriculated in Oxford as a Gentleman Commoner of New College, and kept the usual residence until 1831, in which year, in Easter term, he took his degree. One of his fellow-students, who has since risen to eminence in Oxford, recalling these old days, says that he was “a quiet, regular student of unblameable life, at a time and under circumstances not over-favourable to study, and that he won the regard and respect of his contemporaries in the University as well as within the College.” Many of these contemporaries have passed away, but the chief among those who survive is Mr Gladstone, the present Prime Minister of Great Britain, whose friendship with his former fellow-student still continues. Writing to a friend, Mr Gladstone says of Sir Henry: “When I was an undergraduate at Oxford, I had the privilege of his friendship, and we had also many common friends. I therefore knew in what estimation he was held, and I do not think that any young man of his day enjoyed either a warmer or a more unmixed regard. There was not a drawback of any kind to the sentiment. Nor, indeed, could there be. He was more liberal in his political ideas than most of us at that date, but this circumstance certainly offered no impediment to the free course of friendship, warmed by all the qualities of his heart and mind.” It was in connection with the Union Debating Society at Oxford, of which Mr Moncreiff was at one time president, and in which he gained a high reputation as a debater, that Mr Gladstone delivered the famous speech against the Grey Government, which brought him under the notice of the Duke of Newcastle, through whose influence he entered Parliament. Mr Moncreiff was one of those who spoke in opposition, and upheld the traditional politics of his family—politics which Mr Gladstone was afterwards to maintain and to develop with all the force of his genius.

Before Mr Moncreiff left Scotland for Martley, a deep love for the Scottish Church was already rooted in his mind; and, although his future career was not finally decided on, he was disposed to follow in the footsteps of his clerical ancestors. The opinions of contemporaries, however, pointed in the direction of the Bar, and for a time this was regarded by them and by himself as his probable destination. But before he left Oxford, circumstances made his path clear in the line of his original inclination, and he decided to qualify himself for the ministry in the Church of his fathers. His after-attachment to its traditions, doctrine, and polity was not weakened by his long residence in a community where the dominant ecclesiastical ideas were different, and though living at Oxford at a time when those forces which developed the Tractarian Movement were already at work, he resisted their seductive influence and continued loyal to the Presbyterianism and Calvinism of the Church of Scotland. Possibilities of advancement, such as he could not find elsewhere, were within his reach in the Church of England through his own talents, and the influence of his maternal relative, the Archbishop of Canterbury, and the fact that he turned aside from them for the sake of the modest prospects of a Scotch minister, was a strong testimony to the depth and intensity of his convictions.

After leaving Oxford in 1831, he returned to Edinburgh, and re-entered the University. At the close of the usual course of theological study, he was duly licensed to preach the Gospel, and in 1835 he received and accepted a call to the parish of Baldernock, where he was ordained in January of the following year. His ministry there lasted less than two years, as he was translated to East Kilbride in November 1837. The Church soon afterwards came into the midst of the controversies which led to the Disruption, and though the minister of Kilbride abstained from taking a prominent part in them, he watched their progress with keen interest. His sympathies, however, were expressed on many occasions, and in particular in a letter to Lord Melbourne, published in 1841, in which he defended his grandfather from a charge of having been unfriendly, or at least indifferent, to some of the great principles involved in the controversy between the two parties in the Church, and conclusively proved that the imputation was founded on a misunderstanding of Sir Henry’s real position, and a misinterpretation of what he had written in the Appendix to his Life of Dr Erskine.

In 1843 men’s sympathies were tested by acts, and Mr Moncreiff at the call of duty abandoned the Establishment and allied himself with the fortunes of Evangelicalism. A congregation rallied round him, and was organised; and in due time a suitable place of worship and a manse were erected in connection with the Free Church.

A co-presbyter, who was well acquainted with the events of that period, gives an interesting account of the Kilbride ministry, which he characterises as “earnest, laborious, and successful.” “After Sir Henry had left the Establishment,” says the same authority, “he continued to retain the respect of all classes in the parish.” Sir William Maxwell, of Calderwood Castle, was his near neighbour, and Sir Henry and his lady often visited him. On one occasion he dined at the Castle, along with the Established Presbytery, after the examination of Sir William’s school. The co-presbyter above referred to tells the following amusing anecdote:— “The examination having been protracted beyond the time fixed for its termination, the Presbytery were late in arriving at the castle, where Lady Maxwell and two friends—a military officer and an English rector—were awaiting them. Very soon after they had entered the drawing-room, and before the strangers could be introduced to the ministers, the bell summoned the party to dinner. At the table Sir Henry was seated beside the clergyman. He, genial and affable, in the course of conversation, remarked, ‘I find from my letters this morning that Bishop Stanley is dead,’ adding, ‘But likely you do not feel interested in our bishops.’ ‘ Oh,’ replied his neighbour, ‘I am concerned to hear of Bishop Stanley’s death. He was at Alderly when I was in that quarter, just before going to Oxford.’ The Englishman rejoined, ‘Did you study at Oxford? Then you will feel an interest in the affairs of our Church.’ ‘ Oh yes,’ was the reply; ‘and I learn what is going on with you from my brother, who is rector at Tattenhall in Cheshire.’

“By-and-by, the conversation somehow turned to Bishop Turner, of Calcutta; and the two friends differed in their opinion about the matter under discussion. The rector, appealing to the Presbyterian, said, ‘You will allow, I am sure, that I, as a clergyman of the Church of England, am likely to be better informed than yourself on this subject.’ ‘I can hardly allow that,’ was the answer; ‘for Bishop Turner was my uncle.’ ‘Bishop Turner your uncle !’ exclaimed the rector; ‘then the Archbishop of Canterbury is your uncle!’ ‘Yes, he is,’ was the Free Church minister’s reply.

“When the gentlemen returned to the drawing-room, the evening was far advanced, and very soon afterwards Sir Henry said to his stranger friend, ‘I shall bid you Good night, as I have to go home.’ The rector replied, ‘I am sorry you have to go; I suppose you live in the neighbourhood?’ ‘ Oh yes; my house is at hand,’ was the reply. ‘Well,’ said the clergyman, ‘I am sorry you must go, as I was wishing to have had some conversation with you about the Free Church. I suppose you are not much bothered with it here.’ Sir Henry, somewhat taken aback, slowly replied, ‘Oh—well—I am the Free Church minister.’ But the Episcopalian, proving equal to the occasion, rejoined, ‘Oh, you are not troubled about the income; you have a Sustentation Fund which answers its purpose well.’ ‘Yes,’ he replied, smiling; ‘but I was going to observe that I was formerly the parish minister here, and that gentleman over there was my missionary, or, as you would say, curate; and when I gave up the living he was appointed to it. Good evening.'”

Lord Moncreiff having died in 1851, his son succeeded to the baronetcy. In the following year he accepted a call to St Cuthbert’s, Edinburgh, and thus became, in a Free Church sense, the successor of his grandfather, the minister of St Cuthbert’s parish. While throwing himself heartily into all the work of his new charge, he manifested a special interest in its mission operations and in the intellectual welfare of its young men. The Literary Association connected with the church being composed of the older as well as the younger members of the congregation, happily combined the vivacity of the one with the gravity of the other. In the period with which the writer is acquainted, Sir Henry was the most active member of the Society, and his presence at its meetings gave them a peculiar charm. One did not know whether to admire more, his kind but discriminating criticisms of youthful essayists, or the amiability with which he accepted juvenile criticism of his own wise and thoughtful papers.

After labouring in St Cuthbert’s for about twenty years, Sir Henry obtained the help of a colleague in 1872. The necessity for this assistance, however, did not arise from failing health or strength, but from the fact that his public ecclesiastical work demanded a large amount of his time. It was impossible that one who felt so deep an interest in his Church, and who was so richly endowed with spiritual and intellectual gifts, could escape the responsibilities and burdens of ecclesiastical leadership. This office gradually devolved on Sir Henry, not as an honour which he coveted, but rather as a duty which he could not decline. His hereditary and acquired talents marked him out as the Jurist of the Church, and when one of the principal Clerkships became vacant by the death of Mr Pitcairn, he was chosen as his successor. All who have been in the habit of attending the meetings of the Supreme Court know how much he has contributed to their dignity and order. His unfailing courtesy, his avoidance of dogmatism, his remarkable fairness, his skill in extricating a question and showing its real state, account for the fact that his decisions are received with the utmost deference, and are rarely disputed.

Sir Henry excels as a debater. Scrupulously just to opponents, he treats their arguments with respect, neither dismissing them scornfully nor criticising them with undue severity. He calmly reasons out his own views without appealing to passion or prejudice, and as he never employs sophism, it is difficult to evade his conclusions if his premisses be admitted. If his reasonings should fail to convince opponents, they do not irritate them, and if he has sometimes lost a cause, it is almost certain that his conduct of an argument has never been the occasion of his losing a friend or creating an enemy.

Although so skilful as a controversialist, Sir Henry is not eager to rush into debate. Being by nature more of a judge than an advocate, he is slow to range himself on one side of a disputed question, and keeps his mind long in an inquiring attitude. On this account his utterances in the earlier stages of a controversy are sometimes of a tentative character, but the process of crystallisation soon sets in, and the opinions which were held in solution in his mind become definite in their form.

The position which he has taken up in the ecclesiastical debates of recent years has allied him now with the more Liberal, and now with the more Conservative side of Church politics. He was a warm advocate of the proposed Union between the Free and United Presbyterian Churches, and took a leading part in the negotiations which resulted in the union of the Free Church with the Reformed Presbyterian Church in 1876. Being Convener of the Assembly’s Committee at the time the union was effected, it devolved on him to make all the necessary arrangements for carrying it out, and it was largely owing to his tact and skill that the ceremonies were conducted in a manner so orderly, dignified, and impressive, that they can never be forgotten by those who witnessed them.

Sir Henry’s attitude in late doctrinal discussions in the Church has been conservative, and on the Disestablishment question he occupies a middle position.

For many years Sir Henry has made a diligent use of his pen. Most of his writings have been designed to serve an immediate end by enlightening public opinion in regard to the Church, or by directing and moulding opinion within the Church itself. Some of them, however, have permanent value, as his “Vindication of the Free Church Claim of Right;” the “Manual of Procedure,” which is usually quoted as his, though nominally drawn up by a Committee under his superintendence; and his masterly letter to the Duke of Argyll on “The Identity of the Free Church Claim from 1838 till 1875,” in which he proved with consummate ability that the Free Church had not departed from the position of the leaders of 1842, and that the Patronage Act of 1874 had not conceded to the Establishment all that was asked for in 1843. It is expected that Sir Henry’s forthcoming “Chalmers Lectures on Free Church Principles” will form a standard work on the subject.

Many years have passed since the University of Edinburgh testified its appreciation of his theological learning by conferring on him the degree of Doctor of Divinity. The Free Church has few honours to give, else it would gladly bestow them. The one dignity it has in its gift it conferred on Sir Henry in 1871 by appointing him Moderator of the General Assembly.

There are no bishops in a Presbyterian Church, but there are men whose experience and wisdom, as well as their known interest in all that concerns the welfare of their Church, place them in an almost Episcopal position. Individual ministers from all parts of the country consult them on matters affecting their congregations and presbyteries; the Church expects them to take the lead in her Superior Courts, and to stand by the helm in times of crisis, and when they speak on public questions they are regarded as representatives. Episcopal functions of this character Sir Henry has long discharged. He has been a “great part” of the history of the Free Church of Scotland for many years. Intimately associated with the great ecclesiastical leaders of the past, and inheriting their responsibilities and influence, one cannot but pray that he may be long spared to his Church, to guide her in times of difficulty, and to be the Nestor of her Council Chamber.

Sir Henry W. Moncreiff died, November 4, 1883.

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 James Morrison, M.A. Urquhart

Author: Rev. A. Chalmers Smith, M.A., Urquhart
Source: Our Church Fathers: being Biographical Sketches of Disruption Fathers in and around the Presbytery of Elgin, page 96

James Morrison was born at Auldearn in his grandmother’s house on 30th May 1816. The family home, however, was in the parish of Edinkillie. He was of godly parentage, and was the eldest of a large and exceptionally talented family. He received his education at the parish school, where he had as companions William Fraser, afterwards Rev. Dr. Fraser, Paisley, and William Mackintosh, who became Provost of Inverness, the father of Lord Kyllachy.

At the age of 16 he entered the University of Aberdeen where he distinguished himself as a student both in Arts and Divinity. He was for a time, after the completion of his studies, occupied teaching in Ross-shire, and while there he was licensed to preach by the Presbytery of Dingwall. This was towards the close of 1841. Subsequently he was employed as Missionary at Denny in Stirlingshire.

When the Disruption took place – he was in Edinburgh during the sitting of that famous Assembly – he nobly cast in his lot with the Free Church. Coming north he threw himself heartily into the work of organizing the congregations at Edinkillie and Dallas.

In August, 1843, he was appointed to minister to those adhering to the Free Church in Urquhart. The people were quick to appreciate his worth and determined to secure him as their pastor. For as soon as the month of September they petitioned the Presbytery to moderate in a call in favour of Mr Morrison. As yet they had no place of worship save the barns at Meft and Thriepland, services being held in the former in the morning and in the latter in the afternoon. A new parish church was in the course of erection. The Free Church congregation applied to the Trustees of James, Earl of Fife, for the use of the old parish church as soon as it should become vacant. This they at once obtained and on the 5th Nov., 1843, the day on which the present parish church was opened, Mr Morrison re-opened the old church, and preached in it. But they were not allowed to enjoy this privilege for any length of time. Their occupancy of the old building was galling in the extreme to their opponents, who determined to have them dislodged, imagining that if they were but deprived of this place of worship the congregation would become disorganized, Mr Morrison would quit the parish, and the people would have no help but slip quietly back to the establishment. Knowing that the Fife Family would not recall their gift, they approached the Duke of Richmond who owns about one-twentieth part of the parish praying His Grace to interpose and so put an end to the deplorable state of affairs. Accordingly he applied for interdict which was obtained and duly served. They quietly moved out and took up their old quarters at Meft and Thriepland. Soon after this on 18th April, 1844, Mr Morrison was ordained at Meft. The service was conducted in the courtyard, which had been covered in by sails brought from Garmouth. Thus the interdict had failed in its ultimate object. It proved rather a means of establishing them, for with greater enthusiasm they set about obtaining a church of their own. A first-rate site in the village of Urquhart was obtained, building operations at once commenced, and such was the heartiness, and so great the liberality that by the end of autumn the new church was opened by Rev. Dr. Macdonald of Ferintosh, free of debt.

It is interesting to note that the new church was built with the stones of the old parish church which had been purchased from the Fife Trustees, and that a considerable number of the pews were transferred to the Free Church and are still in use.

There was but one elder who “came out” – the venerable Alexander Anderson of Binns. To permit of a session being constituted, Rev J. Allan, Garmouth, was appointed an assessor. On 4th February, 1845, the following were ordained to the eldership – Wm Anderson, Geo. Cruickshank, Wm. Thompson, Wm. Forsyth, Geo. Milne; and Messrs Taylor, Brander, Hay, Cramond, Sinclair, Reid, McIver, Allan, and Morrison composed the first Deacons’ Court.

Encouraged by their great success in the erection of a church, they proceeded to the building of a manse and at the same time the providing of a school. Education they found in a most lamentable condition, and they determined to rectify matters with all possible speed. And it is worthy of note that in this Mr Morrison was supported and aided, not only by his own people, but, also, by some members of the Established Church who offered to assist in carting materials for the erection of a school. Nor were they less fortunate in securing as the first teacher, Mr. Ayson, one fully equipped for the work, one who did much to mould and determine the Christian character of the youth of the time.

Mr Morrison was not only a skilled organizer but a man possessed of remarkable ministerial gifts. From the first he was a preacher of rare power, and soon came to be ranked among the best preachers of his day. His sermons were those of a man of culture, the work of the scholar and theologian, yet so beautifully simple that the youngest was able to understand. Gifted with a great fluency of speech, having a ready command of language, and possessed of an earnest and animated style of delivery, he never failed to attract and create a deep impression.

His services, ever willingly given, were much in request and highly appreciated. Frequently appointed a Deputy, from the General Assembly, he did much valuable work in the visitation of congregations and presbyteries. He was also invited by the English Presbyterian Church to assist in the work of church extension at Norwich, Wandsworth, and Bermondsey and on each occasion his services were attended with highly encouraging results. Into all spiritual movements he threw himself with great enthusiasm, and by reason of his rare gifts for the carrying on and following up of such work he rendered noble and lasting service to the cause of Christ.

At communion seasons, he was singularly acceptable. The sweet charm of his gracious words on these occasions will long survive in the memory of those privileged to hear them. But while eminently successful throughout the land he was no less so in his own congregation where he was cheered by several remarkable times of blessing as in 1861-62 – when no fewer than 62 joined the church for the first time.

As a pastor he was singularly beloved, and his visits were much prized. He was pre-eminently a man of comfort. His very voice was sweet with the music of loving sympathy. The young of the flock were ever dear to him, and he spared himself no labour for their well-being. The monthly sermons to the young were greatly enjoyed, and the annual catechizing was a source of great interest and lasting profit to old and young alike.

Mr. Morrison also possessed great aptitude for business. This led to his being selected, in 1846, to succeed Mr Topp, Elgin, as Clerk of Presbytery, and, in 1856, as Clerk of Synod of Moray, to which office he was nominated by Rev. William Barclay, Auldearn, who baptized him forty years previously. In this capacity also he won golden opinions. His unfailing courtesy, rare tact, and wonderful power of dispatch rendered him eminently successful and marked him as a model man of affairs.

In his leisure hours Mr Morrison devoted himself to the study of Archaeology, and with such success that for long he was recognised as an authority on the subject. He enriched the National Museum in Edinburgh, as well as the Elgin Museum, with specimens of flint arrows and other implements; found for most part by him in the parish of Urquhart.

During his ministry, Mr Morrison had several opportunities afforded him of moving to larger and more lucrative spheres of labour. But his attachment to a people, equally devoted and attached to him, was so strong and firm that he declined every advance. Thus he continued to labour with unfailing success until the infirmities of years led him to seek the help of an unordained assistant who became his colleague on 26th July, 1893. The unanimity and heartiness which characterized this settlement was one of the happiest experiences in Mr Morrison’s ministerial career at Urquhart. His Jubilee was celebrated with great enthusiasm on 18th April, 1894, when he was made the recipient of handsome gifts expressive of the high esteem in which he was held by his congregation, his brethren in the ministry, and the church as a whole.

Mr Morrison was married to Janet Gillan, daughter of Mr Thomas Gillan and Mrs Gillan, North Guildry Street, Elgin, who proved to be to him a true helpmeet in the Lord. Of their family of five, two daughters survive, who lovingly and assiduously ministered to him in his declining days, and one son who is engaged in the fruit trade in California.

Mr Morrison passed away on the evening of Sabbath, 1st January, 1899, and was laid to rest in the quiet churchyard of the parish he loved so well, and where he spent so many happy days, and fulfilled a ministry so noble and fruitful.

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 John Munro

Author: Rev. Alexander Auld, Olrig
Source: Disruption Worthies of the Highlands , page 195

The Rev. John Munro was a native of Ross-shire, and by both his parents descended from worthy ancestors. John Munro or Caird of Kiltearn (of whom mention is made in the memoir of the Rev. Thomas Hog) was Mr Munro’s great-grandfather, and the race downwards from father to son were eminently godly. His mother also was descended from a family of “Israel’s nobles,” being granddaughter of Andrew Sutherland, another Ross-shire “father,” and who, though poor in this world’s goods, was rich in faith. Mr Munro used to tell, that on her deathbed his mother called her family around her, and after giving them suitable admonition to “follow on to know the Lord,” she added, “My mother told me before she left the world, that she had obtained from the Lord a promise that none of her children would be the prey of Satan; and I have obtained a similar promise in regard to you, my children.” The expectations of Mr Munro’s mother regarding him were early realised; for, while yet a child of nine years of age, the Lord began to deal with him. Being one day at play, he was unexpectedly called to attend a catechising, which chagrined him so much that he felt his heart rise in enmity against God and all divine things. This feeling immediately gave rise to a sense of guilt and hardness of heart, in which state of mind he entered the meeting. But the Lord did not give to one of his tender years some view of his own soul’s sinfulness and misery, without giving him also some glimpse of what such a soul may through grace be brought to. The question put to Mr Munro was, “What benefits do believers receive from Christ at the resurrection?” and he gave the answer, “At the resurrection believers, being raised up in glory, shall be openly acknowledged and acquitted in the day of judgment, and made perfectly blessed in the full enjoying of God to all eternity.” As he repeated these words, thoughts of the blessedness of God’s people, as contrasted with his own felt unhappiness, melted his heart; the obtaining of this blessedness his whole soul desired, and from that day he began to follow after that to which, through grace, he has now attained, “the full enjoying of God to all eternity.”

After receiving in his native parish an ordinary elementary education. he was put to the trade of a carpenter, and after having served his apprenticeship, he went to the city of Aberdeen to work at his business, He occupied, however, his spare hours in study, acquiring some knowledge of the languages. Ultimately becoming fonder of books than of tools, he gave up the latter entirely and entered the university, and after going through the due course of literature and divinity, was licensed to preach the gospel. He came to Caithness in the year 1806, to occupy the Achreny mission. This charge was at that time a most laborious one. It included the three preaching stations of Achreny, Halsary, and Halladale, extending over upwards of twenty miles of hill country destitute of roads; but Mr Munro entered on his work with that cheerfulness which characterised all that he subsequently did in his Master’s service. The gospel had been preached in this mission in purity and power by a succession of able ministers during a period when the country was ecclesiastically a wilderness. Their labours had been largely blessed, and fruits of their ministry were spread over the district. In this sphere Mr Munro was greatly beloved by his flock. A dry eye, it is said, was not to be seen in the Halladale meeting-house the day he preached his farewell sermon there. To the godly fathers and mothers, of whom in the north in these days there were not a few, Mr Munro especially endeared himself by his frankness and simplicity of manner, and genuine warmth of heart. Mr Munro continued in the mission for about ten years, when he received a call to the Edinburgh Gaelic chapel. There he remained until 1825, in which year he was presented to the parish church of Halkirk, through the influence of the late excellent Lady Colquhoun, much to the joy of the parishioners, who for fifty years previously had as a minister a man possessed seemingly of not a single aim in life but that of securing his own worldly comfort and advantage. Mr Munro in personal appearance was not above the middle height, but of portly figure, and a countenance beaming with benevolence. That his mental power, although not his predominant feature, was good, was evident from the position, weight, and influence he attained in the ministerial office. One that knew him well used to say that he knew no man who, without premeditation, could so edifyingly enlarge on any portion of Scripture – a power which could not have been possessed by one of mediocre gifts, although equally gracious. The facility also with which he used to clothe his thoughts in the garb of verse, which at times rose into the region of true poetry, evidenced a mind of unusual capacity. His memory was a rich storehouse, whence were readily reproduced those facts and truths that he felt an interest in. Surviving friends remember what a flow of anecdote and interesting reminiscence enriched his godly conversation; and they will also remember, that though he did not hesitate to repeat these whenever occasion suggested them, yet that his heartiness and delight in them, on account of the principles they embodied, perfectly preserved them from the staleness of a tale often told. Probably the most distinguishing feature in Mr Munro’s character was his large and loving heart. His affections flowed out plentifully in every appointed and appropriate channel, and on the “household of faith” they centred with peculiar strength and constancy. 

At communion seasons the joy it gave him to greet the brethren in the Lord, and the pain it gave him to part from them were very manifest. With what depth of feeling he would say in prayer, at the conclusion of the Monday’s service, “Lord, fit us for the place where no foe enters, where no friend departs, and where the word farewell shall never be heard!” As a preacher Mr Munro had a method peculiarly his own. He would set death and life before his hearers at almost one and the same time – death by the first Adam; life by the second Adam, the Lord Jesus Christ. Depicting forcibly man’s guilt and pollution by reason of original sin, and his slavery and misery by reason of actual sin, he would over against that set forth a free, full, and holy salvation in a way alike edifying and satisfying. Man’s utter depravity and helplessness he never lost sight of, and the suitableness of Christ to such he delighted to exhibit. His own faith was so lively and his love so fervent that of this theme he never wearied. Unfolding the dignity of the Saviour’s person and the grace of his suretyship, he would go on to trace the steps of his incarnation, obedience, sufferings, and death with rare solemnity and tenderness. Then proceeding to speak of his resurrection, ascension, and intercession, he would enlarge on these doctrines in a way singularly fitted to exalt the glory of the Mediator, and to encourage the believer in his risen Lord, who (to use one of his favourite expressions) was “He who never had lost, and never would lose a battle.” Turning then to the sinner, he would seek to win him to this glorious One by every gospel allurement. “Christ,” he would say “is this day coming to Satan’s family in quest of a spouse, and vile and destitute though she may feel herself, yet have her he shall, that he may save and sanctify her, and present her to his Father as his ransomed bride.” The want already noticed of an early and continuous course of education – never almost retrieved in after life – and his devotedness to the study of divine truth, to the comparative disregard of other knowledge, were probably the reasons why at times Mr Munro’s preaching did not attract a certain class of hearers. Christian persons, on account of their confidence in his personal godliness, and because of his uniform weight of doctrine, heard him not only patiently but pleasantly in his least attractive moods. But those among his audience who were captivated rather by the accessories of the gospel message, the language in which it was conveyed, the variety of illustration, and rigid sequence of thought, were too ready to undervalue him. There were times however, and those not a few, when such a rich tide of thought flowed in on him, such majesty of manner and force of expression appeared in his preaching, as not only swayed the hearts of believers, but impressed the most unconcerned. For example, on an occasion that Dr Macdonald, Urquhart, was expected to preach in Wick, Mr Munro went from Halkirk to see and hear him. But the doctor had been unexpectedly recalled south, and Mr Munro on arriving was asked to preach. To this he agreed, and after announcing as his text the second verse of the forty-fifth Psalm – “Thou art fairer than the children of men” – he began his sermon thus:- “Coming here this afternoon, I was struck with the loveliness of creation. The green fields, the sparkling brooks, the blossoming hedges, were all smiling in the sun-shine. Seeing the fairness of creation, I thought of the Fair One who made and upholds all things. I remember the fairness of his divinity, and the fairness of his humanity. Was he not fair in the manger, fair in the cradle, fair in his life, fair in his death? Yea, so fair is he that my soul was led captive of him, and I began to preach him to the birds of the air, and now I will preach him to this congregation.”

Mr Munro was pre-eminently a man of prayer. He prayed literally without ceasing; and in his prayers he had much of a public spirit. The Lord’s goodness in bestowing favourable weather during a long series of Sabbaths in the year of the Disruption, when so many congregations had to worship in the open air, was very manifest The Sabbath morning of the Halkirk communion in that year was cold and windy, with occasional showers of rain. One of the elders expressed to Mr Munro his fear that they would have a disagreeable day, referring to the threatening look of the sky. “No, Donald,” he replied, “it will be a good day; what the Lord gives will be good; many a good day he gave us, and he will give us a good eternity.” About the hour of worship the sky cleared, and the air became so tranquil as not to affect the flame of the candles required at the evening service. Mr Munro having heard that an esteemed friend at a distance had been taken seriously ill, regularly prayed for him at family worship for some time. Mrs Munro, observing that he had not done so for a day or two, asked the reason. “I am thinking,” he said, “that he does not now need our prayers.” They afterwards received an intimation of his death, and Mrs Munro noticed that the date was exactly the day on which her husband had ceased interceding in his behalf. At a time when Mrs Munro was herself so ill that she was not expected to survive, Mr Munro, after praying beside her, rose and said, “Although you are now, my dear, so weak, yet I shall be in heaven before you.” She outlived him more than a year. Mrs Munro was the sister of the late well-known Mr Forbes, minister of Tarbat, and was highly esteemed for her prudence, amiability, and piety.

On the event of the Disruption, Mr Munro was one of the foremost of the outgoing ranks. On that subject he had no misgivings. His view of the duty of the Church seemed clear as noonday. To one who asked him if he had Scripture warrant for that step, he replied, “I can answer you that at once, ‘And Jesus came and spake unto them, saying, All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth’ (Matt. 28:18). Now, those who infringe on this kingly prerogative touch a jewel of Christ’s crown more precious than the life of the universe!” Nor was Mr Munro much concerned as to his temporal support in relinquishing the emoluments of the Establishment. The factor on the Scotscalder estate said to him, “I am surprised that you have left the Establishment.” “Why?” “Oh, because the people will not give you sufficient means of subsistence; you won’t get £40 a-year.” “And do you think,” returned Mr Munro, “that they will give me £40? Why, I would preach the gospel if they would not give me forty pence.”

This suggests to us one or two of those significant and prompt replies for which Mr Munro was remarkable. A bitter lay partisan of the Moderate side, on meeting him in Edinburgh, said, holding out his hand to him, “I suppose, Mr Munro, you will not be willing to shake hands with me now.” “Oh, yes; why would not one sinner shake hands with another?” was the rejoinder. Sir George Sinclair, who did not see his way to join the Free Church until a few years after the Disruption, sent a message by a friend to Mr Munro to the effect that he was sorry he could not follow him in the step he had taken. “Well, tell Sir George,” was the reply, “that I am going to heaven, and let him be sure to follow me there.”

On the 25th March 1847, he came to Thurso to attend a meeting of Presbytery, and being suddenly taken ill, was brought to the house of Mr Taylor, Free Church minister, where he remained till his death, which took place that day week. During his illness his mind was quite collected to the last; and the manner in which he endured his sufferings, and looked forward to death, was such as might be expected from the tenor of his life. Though in much pain, yet he exclaimed, “He hath done all things well! He never did anything wrong, and He never shall!” Afterwards, speaking of the glorious prospects before him, he said, “Oh, I shall be ashamed when I enter heaven!” but then added, as if correcting himself, “But there shall be no shame there.” The night before he died he suffered much. Nature’s struggle with death was evidently severe. It was said to him, “You appear to be very uneasy.” He replied, “The Lord’s will.” Reference was then made to the Saviour’s sufferings, when he exclaimed very distinctly, “He trod the wine-press alone!” And then, in connection with another observation made to him, he said, “I shall soon be at my rest.” A few hours after, after breathing peacefully for some time, he calmly fell asleep in Jesus on the morning of Thursday, the 1st April.

 Thus died this venerable servant of Christ in the seventy-ninth year of his age and forty-first of his ministry. His body was conveyed next day to his own house, and was interred in the churchyard of Halkirk on the Monday following, amid an immense concourse of mourners. His loss was much felt, not only by his beloved widow and relatives and flock, and by his brethren in the Presbytery of Caithness, but over the country generally; and this feeling was responded to wherever he was known throughout the Church. In proof of his decided and unswerving attachment to the cause of the Free Church, it may be mentioned that one of his expressions on his death-bed was, that he would not be comfortable were he in the Establishment. But not the Free Church merely, the Church universal sustained a great loss in his removal. Those who knew him intimately believed this, and felt cause to exclaim with the prophet, “My father, my father, the chariots of Israel and the horsemen thereof.” 

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17 He had always, however, a genius for organisation. An old school-fellow mentions, that when they used to play soldiers at Perth Academy, it was an object of ambition to “get into Bob Macdonald’s regiment!”

18 Mr Maitland wrote an admirable tractate, entitled, “A help to Adherents of the Free Church, to decide on principle and for themselves the question, What contribution is equitably due by me to the Sustentation Fund?” It was very useful at the time, and is well worthy of republication. “The Political Economy of the Sabbath” also engaged his pen; and a very able anonymous pamphlet, with a clear statement of principles, true for all time, on “Spiritual Independence in its lower or Civil and Ecclesiastical Bearings.”

19 For fuller details, the reader is referred to Life and Letters of Hugh Miller, by Peter Bayne M.A.