THERE passed away on the third day of December last year an esteemed member of the Edinburgh congregation in the person of Mrs. Humphrey, wife of Mr. Donald Humphrey, precentor. Her removal by death was not only a great loss to her husband and friends, but to the congregation. She was a truly sincere Christian, who loved the gates of Zion, and prayed for the good of Jerusalem. Humble and retiring in disposition, she kept very much in the background, so that she was only thoroughly known by those who visited her dwelling. There, her gentle, refined manner, warm, kindly affection and intelligent Christian conversation clearly appeared, and revealed an attractive and valuable personality. Friends, who thus knew her, will cherish her memory with lasting regard. A few details of her personal history may now be given.
Mrs. Jane Mackenzie or Humphrey was born at Fairburn, Muir of Ord, in the year 1848, the third youngest member of a family of nine. Her father, John Mackenzie, was a joiner and saw-miller; her mother was Mary Maclennan, a native of Strathbran, near Garve. During the early period of her life, her parents attended the ministry of the late Rev. James Macdonald, the respected minister of Urray, for whom her father acted as precentor for several years. Afterwards they came to Maryburgh. We cannot tell at what age Jane underwent a saving change, or what experiences she then passed through, but she spoke in after years of the great joy she had, when she was a young woman, in going on the Sabbath evenings from Maryburgh to Dingwall to hear Dr. Kennedy preach. She also spoke of hearing occasionally the Rev. Francis Macbean of Fort Augustus, whose preaching she could never forget. She came to Edinburgh in the year 1873, when she was twenty-five years of age, and there attended the ministry of the Rev. Dr. Thomas Maclachlan, Free St. Columba’s. Dr. Maclachlan was in the habit of reading consecutive chapters in Gaelic from the Old Testament, and explaining them throughout, an exercise she much enjoyed. The subject of this sketch was married in 1890, and a year after Mrs. Humphrey and her husband went to Greyfriars Free Church, then ministered to by the late Rev. D. M. Macalister. At this time, “Constitutionalist” students kept services on Sabbath evenings in the Hall of the Church, services which she appreciated and enjoyed.
Mrs. Humphrey, along with many others, was much grieved with the serious departures from the truth in doctrine and worship which were then taking place in the Free Church, and which culminated in the passing of the erroneous Declaratory Act in 1892, and so when the Free Presbyterian Church was formed in 1893—not a “new creation” or denomination, as some are presently making out, but the Free Church in its original purity and faithfulness, freed from the corrupt accretions of forty years—and a congregation was organised in Edinburgh, Mrs. Humphrey shortly thereafter transferred her membership to the same, and continued all along in loyal and affectionate attachment to the Free Presbyterian cause and testimony till the day of her death.
Her last illness was short, and her end was peace. We express our deepest sympathy with her sorrowing husband in his great bereavement, and trust that he may be abundantly consoled and strengthened from above. Our sympathy is also extended to the other surviving friends. “There remaineth therefore a rest to the people of God.”
J. S. S.