MINISTER OF CROY, INVERNESS-SHIRE. BORN, 1712; DIED, 1775.
Edited from the Original MSS., with Illustrative Notes,
BY THE LATE REV. WM. TAYLOR, M.A., STIRLING.
(Continued from page 222.)
“Monday, 31st.—. Visited the honourable family of Fo—s,* lodged with them, met with great hospitality. This family has been justly famed for its attachment to our holy religion, and particularly to our mother church, from the Reformation till now. O, may it be so still from one generation to another! Amen.
- Foulis. The family of Munro, Baron of Foulis, in Ross-shire, was one in which personal religion appeared remarkably in successive generations during more than two centuries, and which exercised an important influence on the religious prosperity of the Northern Highlands. Doddridge, when preparing his well-known memoir of Colonel Gardiner, had his attention arrested by some of the facts, and has given an outline of them in an appendix to that work. It is said that most of the old papers of this family were burned some years ago in London. If so, the loss for the religious history of the Highlands is great and, we fear, irreparable.
“Tuesday, August 15th.—This day had the pleasure to have all my family about me: and a sweet, pleasant, faithful family they are through grace. Glory, glory be to God for His goodness to them and me. May I be humble and thankful, and oh! may they be honoured to glorify God more and more. As their days and ways and duties and office are, so let their strength be! Amen.
“September 6th.—This day the Lord gave me great comfort in having all my children with me. Conference and prayer with them. Blessed be the Lord for ever and ever! Amen.
Sabbath, October 15th.—Weak and faint and in all respects unprepared as I was, I went up to the house of God in a dependence on His wonted aids; and to the praise of His free grace and His great power, I felt no weakness of body nor straitness of spirit, but, on the contrary, much strength, light, liberty, and enlargement. Glory be to His name! Lord, forgive my shortcomings! Amen.
“Sabbath, 22nd.—The Lord was very gracious to His poor unworthy servant to-day. Went to the house of God, poor, weak, and sickly. Felt no sickness or weariness all the time I was employed in public in the service of my glorious Master. Had uncommon liberty and enlargement in the last discourse. Blessed be the Lord! Amen. May the good Lord forgive wherein I have come short to-day! Amen.
“Thursday, November 9th.—Set out in great feebleness of body to a diet of examination at L—n; but my good and gracious Master strengthened me in soul, body, and spirit, and it was a sweet and happy day to me, and I hope to others. Blessed for ever be the Lord! Amen.
“Monday, 13th.—Preparing to set out in the Lord’s strength for Rosskeen, to help my dear and worthy son. May the mighty God of Jacob help me, the poor worm Jacob! As my day and way, so let my strength be! Amen. The weather is forbidding to-day, but I trust the Lord will clear up the skies and make my way prosperous. As I go on a good errand, and desire to keep His way for ever, I trust He’ll give His angels charge, and that the adorable Angel of the covenant will surround with His favour as with a shield. Lord, take care of my flock and family! Amen.”
CHAPTER IX.
THE HAPPY CLOSE.
“The prayers of David the son of Jesse are ended.” Such is the expressive note reverentially appended by a descendant to Mr. Calder’s manuscript, which here ends. Having in the foregoing words commended himself, his flock and his family, to the keeping of “the adorable Angel of the covenant,” he crossed the Moray and Cromarty firths, to fulfil his engagement at Rosskeen, the parish to which his eldest son John had just been removed. He then set out homewards, by a more circuitous route, through Ferintosh, the parish of his youngest son Charles, and in his house was taken ill and breathed his last. His three sons were all gathered round his dying bed. From a letter of the second son Hugh, written in the beginning of the following year to a friend in London, we extract an account of the closing scene:—
“URQUHART MANSE, 1776.
“MY DEAR AND WORTHY FRIEND,—Very soon after my brother’s settlement at Rosskeen, the health of the dearest, the loveliest, the most affectionate and best of parents, and best of men, began to give way; yet he was not kept from preaching and attending to the duties of his sacred office much above a fortnight. It was a disorder in his stomach with which he was afflicted, to which he was subject many years before, but at last came to so great a height that it was attended with violent vomitings and retchings every other half-hour, so that nothing lay upon his stomach. We had the advice and attendance of the best physicians in the country; but his distemper had passed the power of medicine, though our fond wishes had made us hope far otherwise. We still entertained flattering hopes of his recovery; though he seemed to have none himself, but was looking forward with sweet composure of mind, and sometimes with transports of joy, to the solemn concluding scene, which was much nearer than we believed it. I think it was on the 11th of December he took his bed, from which he rose no more. Those eyes that were wont to meet us sparkling with joy are now shut in darkness; silent is that tongue that tenderly soothed all our sorrows, and sweetly counselled us in all our doubts.
“During the whole time of his distressful illness he discovered most remarkable patience, and still manifested the sweetest resignation to the Divine will, and sometimes talked in such rapturous strains of heaven, that he seemed liker an inhabitant of the other world than of this. The love of Christ was ever warm in his heart; it was his sweetest song in the house of his pilgrimage, his most delightful theme in his last illness, and his reviving cordial in his dying moments. With what sublime elevation of spirit did he anticipate the joys of immortality when his heart and his flesh were fainting and failing; talking to those around him of the happy company above as if he had already joined the celestial throng, and had seen and heard, as he expressed himself, the heavenly harpers harping on their harps, and modulating the name of Jesus on ten thousand harps at once. This was but what might have been well expected from the life he led; though it is not always the privilege of the most eminent saints to die so triumphantly. For the last twelve hours he had remarkable ease and rest, and early on the Sabbath morning he shut his eyes in peace, and finished his well-spent life with the sweetest composure, without the least appearance of pain. At the dawning of that blessed day which he was ever wont to welcome with heart-felt joy, he began to celebrate the everlasting Sabbath above, welcomed to the seats of bliss with a ‘Well done, good and faithful servant, enter thou into the joy of thy Lord.’ He joined sweetly, a little before he expired, in singing the 138th Psalm; and the last words he was heard to utter were, ‘He’s coming, He’s coming;’ and when one asked, ‘Who is coming?’ he answered—’Precious Christ.’
“I am sure you and all my other friends in London will tenderly sympathise with his distressed children under the pressure of their unspeakable loss; for sure I am, a more dutiful and affectionate parent never lived. His strong affection to us appeared almost to the last moment, and when he had not the power of speech he would kiss our hands; and during all the time of his great distress he seemed to be more uneasy about us than for himself, and when he saw us overcome at any time, he would say to us, ‘What is the meaning of that? you hurt me and you hurt yourselves; my distress will be over in a moment; I think nothing of it,’ says he. ‘When I think of the bloody agony and distress of my blessed Jesus, should I complain?’ We have been most whole nights up without his knowing of it, giving directions behind the curtains; for it would make him so uneasy to see us watching him. . . . He expressed great satisfaction in having us all about him; and it was no little satisfaction to us to hear him say, with praise to God, that he had nothing to make him uneasy. He always spoke to us in the most loving, affectionate expressions that could well be uttered—we were unhappy to be one moment out of his room, or to lose one word that dropped from his lips.
“I have not leisure nor room to mention many of the sublime and wonderful words he spoke, which would take many sheets; and I much regretted that they could not be taken down when spoken. I never heard such expressions of humility from anybody. ‘Oh,’ says he, ‘they spoke much of what I did, but I did nothing. I might have done a thousand things I never did, yea ten thousand; but His love, His benignity have come over all my sins and imperfections; and He is my reconciled God, and He has made with me an everlasting covenant that shall never be broken. Heaven and earth, time and eternity, praise Him! O if I were now in the pulpit, I could say more glorious things of the blessed Redeemer than ever; for I never had such exalted or sublime views of His glory and of the wonderful plan of redemption—not at the sweetest sacrament I ever attended.’ As a remarkable instance of his great humility and his great obligations to redeeming love, so that he thought he could not do enough, he said, ‘If the parish of Croy were not remarkably mild and good, they would not have put up with such a poor wretched creature as me,’ though he toiled and laboured continually among them. May Heaven teach us to make a proper improvement of this very afflicting dispensation of Providence, by following the pleasant, peaceful paths of those who, through faith and patience, are now inheriting the promises and resting from their labours, and singing the song of Moses and the Lamb for ever and ever!'”
(To be continued.)