III.
(Continued from p. 343.)
I should like now to tell you more about some of these good men, whose names I have mentioned; and especially to tell you a little more about Andrew Lindsay himself, who did not die young, but lived for half a century.
About Mr Gordon the excellent minister of Cromarty I cannot tell much. His good lady in 1685 had been in exile in New England for the truth. He began his ministry in 1707, and laboured long and much for his Master. About 1745, he with two of his elders, broke in pieces an old stone trough, called the “Fairies’ Cradle,” because the people made a superstitious use of it. He is so like in spirit that I have wondered (though without authority) whether or not he was related to a famous old lady, Mrs Gordon, who lived in the days of the Covenanters. She was the wife of a former minister of Cromarty, and was remarkable for beauty even in old age, with a smooth unwrinkled forehead, shaded by a profusion of black, glossy hair, in which was not the slightest tinge of grey. She was only eighteen when the persecution ended in 1688, and yet she had suffered much; for she had when very young chosen the good part, and cast in her lot with the godly, who at all hazards maintained the rights of Christ’s Cross and Crown. There was a story that her ears had been cut off by the persecutors, and that to hide this loss she had the custom of arranging her hair so that it fell over her ears. A young girl, who was in her service when she was now old, was noticed by Mrs Gordon one day casting a very curious inquisitive glance at her from time to time, as her mistress was dressing. Guessing the meaning of this glance, the good kind old lady bid her come near; “You are a curious little girl and have heard that I have lost my ears, have you not? but here they are,” (shading back her hair as she spoke.) “Wicked men once threatened to cut them off, and a knife was sharpened for the purpose; but God permitted them not.”
Nor can I give any further account of Mr James Davidson, the minister from England. One thing is interesting about the place there where he preached the gospel, viz., Dedham, in the county of Essex: perhaps no place has had so many faithful and successful ministers. About the year 1620, an old minister there, Mr John Rodgers, was preaching on a week-day, when some boys from school tried to get near the pulpit of the crowded church. The old minister saw them, and looking at them said: “Here are some young ones come for Christ! Will nothing serve you but you must have Christ! Then you shall have Him!” One of these boys was awakened at that moment, and became himself a useful minister of Christ.
But we can tell you a little more about Andrew Lindsay. Some foolish people think that all who are converted young, die young. It is quite a mistake, and it has arisen from the fact that nobody cares to write about young people while they are living, lest they should be proud and conceited at finding their names in print. And then the godly young people who, like Samuel, and Daniel, and John, grow up in the fear and love of God, are written about not as young, but as men who from their youth followed the Lord. Andrew Lindsay was one of this kind. He lived to be fifty years old. Nor did he lose the fervour of his love, nor the liveliness of his faith. “The path of the just is as the shining light, that shineth more and more unto the perfect day” (Prov. iv. 18).
After the conversations mentioned above, Mr Davidson saw him again, and asked him “how the work of God was going on in his soul?” He replied, “I hope it is going forward; for of late I have been taught to see further into the mysteries of sin in my heart. Particularly I find a woeful inclination to trust myself, and to lean on religious exercises and grace received, more than on the fullness that is in Christ.” He added, “That because he was not afflicted as some of the saints were, Satan suggested to him that he was a bastard, and not a son. But in a little time the Lord gave me an answer to this objection. Now and then the Lord hides His face from me for half a day, and He knows that this affects me more than all the miseries of this present life; hence I infer that I am a child of God, and no bastard, because I account the Lord’s absence the sorest chastisement.”
One day, when he observed some, who themselves made a profession of religion, pointing at him with wonder, he said, “If they knew my heart, they would wonder at me on a different account, even on account of my great vileness.”
The last time Mr Davidson saw him was about the beginning of the year 1740. On that occasion Andrew walked three or four miles with him, and told him that “for several months he had been under the force of many sore temptations, but that the Lord had graciously brought him forth to behold the light of His countenance, and to rejoice in His righteousness.”
He was dutiful to his widowed mother, and kept up family worship in her house.
For nearly thirty years we hear nothing more of him; these thirty years passed on in obscurity like the Master’s life in Nazareth none the less, however, pleasing to the Lord, who has said, “Your father who seeth in secret shall reward you openly.” (Matt. vi. 4.) “He that is faithful in that which is least is faithful also in much.” (Luke xvi. 10.) But this we know, his life, deducting these years, was so consistent, and made such an impression on the people of the town, that when he died, all spoke of him as one who had walked with God. On his tomb, which may be seen at this day in the old church-yard, it is told, “that he was truly godly from a child, his whole life and conversation agreeable thereto,” and that he died in 1769. This was in the fiftieth year of his age.
His forefathers were rich, and he was always poor. You are not to think that God makes all his people enjoy worldly prosperity; for you remember Luke ix. 57-58, and how the Rich Man, who went to hell, used to pass, day by day at his gate, the poor diseased Lazarus. The Lord who loved Lazarus so well, left him poor and a beggar to the day of his death; but never left him destitute of what was needful, and never forgot him for a moment, till He took him home to glory. The righteousness and his seed are never forsaken by God, even though they be reduced so low as to be beggars for their bread. (Psa. xxxvii. 25.) They shall find God making up to them in the Kingdom of Glory all their poverty, and straits, and sorrows here. When Andrew Lindsay rises in the Resurrection of the Just, and shines as the Sun, will he regret that he was not rich or great? Will he not rather thank God for saving him from the snares into which many of his ancestors fell; “for they that will be rich fall into temptation and a snare, and into many foolish and hurtful lusts, which drown men in destruction and perdition.” (1 Tim. vi. 9).
(To be continued.)