John Macdonald of Calcutta ⁽¹⁾
5. Mr Valiant for the Truth
Rev Neil M Ross

We cannot conclude this review of John Macdonald's ministry without underlining his faithfulness to the exhortation: "Earnestly contend for the faith which was once delivered to the saints." He courageously and clearly exposed, for example, the errors of Rome. He really began to prize Scotland's Protestant heritage during his divinity studies, when he closely examined the doctrines of Rome against those of Scripture. "While thus busily putting on the armour which was to fit him in future years for the good fight of faith," Tweedie emphasises, "he was not rash or precipitate in employing it."

In India he observed that the gospel was in conflict, not only with the idolatry of Hinduism, but also with Popery as Hinduism's ally in perpetuating idolatry. "So baneful was the influence of Romanism in Bengal," writes Tweedie, "that no fewer than three missionaries of our Church, in Calcutta alone, have had to assail it." He was referring to the polemic pamphlets published by Alexander Duff and W S Mackay as well as by John Macdonald.

The influence of Roman Catholicism in Calcutta increased rapidly as convents, schools and colleges sprang up - with the help, sad to say, of the subscriptions and other support of many professing Protestants. John Macdonald therefore proposed, at the 1844 Calcutta Missionary Conference, that a series of public lectures about Popery be given. An Association of ministers of various denominations was formed, a programme of nine lectures drawn up - John Macdonald being assigned the preliminary explanatory address and the third lecture, The Doctrine of Grace as perverted by Romanism, with special reference to justification by faith. These two lectures and an article entitled, Protestant Subscriptions to Popish Institutions, were later published together as a book of more than 100 pages.

In his opening address he declared, "We boldly say that the man who cares not about the system of Popery when existing before his eyes, or for the salvation of Papists when they are spread around him, is neither loving God with all his heart, nor loving his neighbour as himself". He asked: "Shall we expose the paganism that disowns God's Word, the Muhammadanism that supplants it, the Deism that denies it, the Socinianism that sports with it, the Nominalism that dishonours it; and leave untouched and unexposed that deadly Romanism which mixes, corrupts, perverts, and thus destroys, the very substance and essence and power of the gospel committed to our trust? Brethren, can we, dare we, then be silent in regard to it?" We note too that he did not accept Roman Catholic baptism. "If Rome be Antichrist, the Man of Sin, the Whore of Babylon," he wrote to a friend, "ought any of her ordinances to be acknowledged as Christian, valid ordinances? Ought her baptism to be acknowledged as Christian baptism?"

In his trenchant pamphlet, Protestant Subscriptions to Popish Institutions, based on the text, "For whatsoever is not of faith is sin" (Rom 16:23), he says, "We are neither ashamed nor afraid to maintain that the Roman apostacy is 'Babylon', and an 'Antichrist'; and that, as such, it is under the ban of Almighty God". He then asks, "Why do some Protestants support Popery? . . . O Protestant friends and brethren," he pleaded, "have ye no channels of benevolence more consistent than this? Is there no less doubtful, no surer, way of doing good?" "Take heed", he warned, "lest the Judge find you partakers of her sins."

Undoubtedly it was love for the honour and glory of the great Head of the Church and tender concern for precious souls that lay at the root of his detestation of the delusive and destructive system of Romanism. "I am sorry that your views of Popery do not permit you to 'hate' it," he wrote to one correspondent. "I do not, and I did not, speak of Papists, but of Popery; and I rejoice to say that I hate it with my whole soul, and I pray God I evermore may abhor it as evil; and the more I hate it, the more am I able to pity and compassionate those who are its victims."

John Macdonald was also a noted and decided opponent of worldliness. He had begun his pilgrimage to the better country and he was not minded to return. When he settled in his London pastorate, he saw, Tweedie points out, that "he either resolutely opposes the world's ungodliness, and is repaid with the world's coldness and antipathy, or he imbibes the world's spirit, panders to the world's love of novelty and excitement, mingles in the world's frivolities, and enjoys the world's smile". He was in no doubt about the path he ought to tread.

"His spirit was deeply stirred," says Tweedie, "when he saw how the Church and the world were commingled - how the boundary line between them was effaced - till men too often acted as if God and mammon could both be served." "The Lord help me!" he wrote. "O for more faithfulness! My heart beats with longing at the thought of speaking out against the world and hell. O for help in these trying times!"

It need hardly be said that he did not testify against worldliness from a "holier-than-thou" attitude. He humbly confessed, "I felt ashamed that such a wretch as I should preach on holiness, but I felt that I must go on. O there is a loud cry here for firmness and decision, for breaking the fearful compromise between the Church and the world. . . . O Lord, arise and have mercy; deliver, deliver me; save Thy people and bless Thine inheritance."

In his sermon on Enoch walking with God, he asserted, "Separation from an evil world must evidently arise out of a life of communion with God. . . . It is vain to think that we can walk with God and with the world too. We must separate ourselves from the world's principle, for it is pride; we must separate from its practice, for it is rebellion; we must separate from its profession, for it is hypocrisy; we must separate from its motive, for it is selfishness; we must shine as lights, making manifest the evil that is around us, bearing testimony for God and against sinners even unto the death, despising the world's censure as dross and counting its reproach as the dust under our feet."

In Calcutta, as in London, he was deeply grieved by the spirit of the world as he saw it operating constantly in the lives of so many professing Christians. Consequently he published articles on, for example, attendance at the theatre and at heathen festivals. It is not surprising that he was regarded, says Tweedie, as "a troubler of the world, and a disquieter of many in the Church" and "did not escape the vituperations of an ungodly world; but he was unmoved thereby". "He might be reckoned strict, severe, uncompromising," Tweedie continues, "and he was so to sin, but not to the sinner," a fact that was demonstrated by his tender compassion for those that were out of the way and far astray.

There were, of course, professing Christians who decided that John Macdonald was not sufficiently compliant to worldly men in order to win them to Christ - that he was not as willing as he should have been to become all things to all men, in order to save some. How right Tweedie was when he commented that the man "who would compromise God's truth, or deal with worldly men as if they were not worldly, in the hope of attracting them to the Saviour, will speedily find that he is only entangled in their snare, instead of leading them to the Lamb of God"!

Although John Macdonald mourned over, and fought against, what was contrary to sound doctrine and a life of godliness, he was very hopeful about the future. He believed with his whole heart the promises of Scripture which speak about the worldwide coming of Christ's kingdom. Unlike some Scottish ministers of his day (the Bonar brothers, for example), he was a convinced post-millennialist.

In his preliminary address of the Calcutta lectures on Popery, he asserted, "The day will certainly come when it will be said, 'Babylon is fallen, is fallen, is fallen!' We believe that Popery is yet, perhaps soon, to acquire a short but fearful ascendency in the earth, that we shall yet, if we be faithful and true, have with her a fearful struggle, so that the witnesses of God on the earth will seem to be slain for a time; but a glorious resurrection will follow; awful judgements will strew the earth with the wrath of God, until His enemies be broken; the Spirit of the Lord shall be poured out on all flesh: the latter-day glory shall then appear. Popery shall be gone for ever . . . then the true Catholic Church, the universal assembly of the true believers in the Lord Jesus Christ, as revealed in the gospel, shall prevail and cover the earth. . . . Such is the triumphant prospect held out to those that hold by the Word of God; and shall we not enter on the conflict that we may partake of the triumph too?"

Such a glorious prospect comforted his soul. Preaching from Isaiah 51:9, "Awake, awake, put on thy strength, O arm of the Lord!" he declared, "The most glorious movement is yet to come, when 'a nation shall be born in a day', and the vastly-peopled world shall become the diadem of our God. Then indeed shall the 'arm of the Lord' be made bare before all nations, and the long-known Redeemer shall be hailed as 'King of kings, and Lord of lords'. Such future glory is present to faith, and we suck out the benefit of it as if it even now existed." As John Macdonald was being given foretastes of the promised glory of the Church of Christ both in this world and in the world to come, he was also being steadily prepared for that eternal glory into which he entered in his forty-first year.

There is no doubt that the life of John Macdonald was, as John Macleod notes in his Scottish Theology, "the life of an unusually saintly man". When he was lying unconscious and nearing his end, he was visited by the veteran Swiss missionary Lacroix, who said as he looked at the dying man: "There lies the holiest man in India". One mark of his saintliness was the very low view he had of himself, as is shown by his diary and the testimony of those who observed him. His constant resolve regarding his Saviour was: "He must increase and I must decrease". We cannot read the life and writings of John Macdonald of Calcutta without feeling how far short we come of what we ought to be and do. Truly, he being dead yet speaks to us.

Endnotes:
1. This is the last section of a paper given at the 2004 Theological Conference.