WE regret that the promise made to our readers last February of a small tribute to the late John Macleod, has been so long delayed. This delay has been caused by want of accurate details, which friends have kindly given, and also by want of time, as other duties exhausted all my leisure hours. The shortness and uncertainty of man’s life has been brought home very much to my mind, by the early removal of this young man, and I often, when thinking of him, remember the words in Isaiah—”The voice said, Cry. And he said, What shall I cry? All flesh is grass, and all the goodliness thereof is as the flower of the field the grass withereth, the flower fadeth; because the Spirit of the Lord bloweth upon it: surely the people is grass. The grass withereth, the flower fadeth; but the word of our God shall stand for ever.”
John Macleod was born at Culkein, Stoer, Assynt, in the year 1875. His parents were very respectable, and gave their family a sound moral training. John, however, lived without God and without hope in the world till he was twenty-one years of age. He came to Glasgow in the year 1894, and the good work began in him in 1896. He seems to have been a long time under deep conviction. He asked a friend one day, “Are you guilty of breaking all the commandments of God?” He said himself, “I am guilty,” and quoted the scripture—”The devils believe, and tremble.” In the year 1898 he wrote, “I thought since I came to this place that I got a moment that I would desire that He would take me away without ever seeing my friends any more in the flesh. I speak of the love of Christ. If I am not deceived, I have some experience of the love of Christ; and, as the other boy said, ‘If I was deceived, it was a sweet deceiving’.” In this same letter he speaks thus about death—”Now, dear D., may we be preparing to die, for die we must.” He wrote this letter when he was visiting friends out of Glasgow. In the year 1900 he wrote to another friend. He quoted the truth—”Who is so great a God as our God?” Of this truth he said, “This verse of Scripture has been made quick and powerful to my soul, so that it raised all my affections and thoughts to things above, so that I could not say whether I was in the body or not. The first thing I saw is this, that I was a lost, hell-deserving sinner, so that I put my Amen to my own eternal damnation, and I had to fold my arms for ever as a helpless babe, for anything I could do myself to escape the punishment of an offended God—that no creature, man, or angel would avail anything—that God is so pure that He cannot look upon sin—that no unclean thing can come into His presence. Then I saw Christ as the only way to the Father, and I was enabled to embrace Him as the Saviour of my never-dying soul. I got such a sight of myself as free from sin as though I had never sinned. Oh, for five minutes of the feelings I had that day, when the heart-melting love of God in Christ seemed to go through all the faculties of my soul. The next thing I saw was that I had been elected in the past eternity. If this is not salvation, I am deluding my immortal soul for an endless eternity.” We understand the above as giving a brief outline of the experiences through which he had passed, and we give them as he wrote them. He seems to have been two years under the deep convictions which he describes above, i.e., from 1896 to 1898. The deliverance was orderly, scriptural, and triumphant.
In the spring of 1904 he had a serious attack of influenza, and his lungs were badly affected. He went to three Communions in the north that summer; but the trouble continued to make deep inroads upon his constitution. In October the doctors told him that he could not live through the winter in Glasgow, and they ordered him off to Australia. Kind friends north and south helped most willingly to pay his passage, so he left Glasgow before the end of October. He arrived in Australia, and was the guest of our worthy friends, Rev. W. Scott and his worthy helpmate, in the Manse, Brushgrove, Clarence River, for several months. Notwithstanding all was done for him that could be done, he continued to fall deeper into the decline. He made up his mind at last to leave his kind friends in Australia, and to proceed to Dunedin, New Zealand, where a married sister of his lives. After he got there he entered a Sanatorium, and for some time made good recovery; but there was to be no recovery for poor John. He soon found that the Sanatorium was of no use, and he went to reside with his sister. During his stay in Dunedin he was exceedingly grieved by the carelessness and open profanity of the people. So revolting did the ungodliness of the place appear to him, that he made up his mind, weak as he was, to leave it for home again. His poor sister and her husband did all they could for him. At last a blood vessel burst in the lung, and in a short time he slept in Jesus—on 16th January, 1906.
His remains were buried in the Northern Cemetery, Dunedin, to rest there till the last day. We have no doubt but he will take his place on the right hand that day.
Our deepest sympathy goes forth towards his brother and sisters; and may the Lord bind them all in the bundle of life.
N. C.
Denying the Faith and Worse than an Infidel.
Lady Culross, on one occasion, asked a pious woman, Euphan M’Cullen, to pray for her ladyship’s family, and on making enquiry what answer she received, replied—”He that provides not for his own house hath denied the faith.” Whereat the lady said, “Now you have killed me; for I go to preachings and communions here and there, neglecting the care of my family.” Effie replies, “Mistress, if you be guilty in that, you have reason to be humbled for it; but it was not said in that sense to me; but the Lord said, ‘I that have said, he that provides not for his own house is worse than an infidel, will not I provide her and her house, seeing she is mine?'”—Livingstone’s Characteristics.