MR REID was born in the town of Ayr in the year 1839. His father was an uncompromising man in the things of God and His truth. He did his utmost to teach his family the duty of adhering consistently to the doctrines and principles of the Church of Christ. He did this both by precept and example. The writer learned this from Mr Reid, who admired his father to the last as a loving father and as a man of true piety and integrity.
Mr Robert Reid was a man of business. He had a large concern in the upholstery line in Edinburgh, which caused him to take up his abode in London during several years. While he was in London he attended regularly on the ministrations of the late Mr Spurgeon. His admiration for Mr Spurgeon as a preacher of the gospel of the grace of God was very profound. None could be in his company for any length of time without being impressed with this.
The first time the writer met him was about twenty years ago. The occasion of his call at that time was to ascertain why the Free Presbyterian Church had not agreed to unite with the present Free Church. After a long conversation as to the reasons why, he left convinced that there were real reasons of maintaining separation until outstanding differences should be removed. But he was confident that the Free Church, at the Assembly following, would take steps to have them removed. The writer never heard how his report was received by the Free Church, but nothing was done. The conviction he left on the writer’s mind was that he was a very intelligent and upright man, and that he was whole-hearted in his desire for union on an equitable basis.
Sixteen years after the above meeting, he called on the writer, and told him that, on account of the countenance the Free Church gave to men and Churches who hold unsound views of the inspiration and infallibility of the Bible, he brought forward a motion at the Assembly to put a stop to this evil tendency, and that he got very little support or encouragement. He appealed then to the meeting of Commission in August, but when he arrived in Edinburgh to prosecute his appeal, he was told that the meeting could not be held because there was not a quorum present to constitute the Commission. He asked the writer whether he could be received by the Kirk-Session of St Jude’s as a member in full communion with the Free Presbyterian Church. He was told that he would certainly be received, seeing he was fully justified in separating from the Church in which he had been for so many years, on account of the vital principles for which he was doing so. But he was told that, so as to maintain Presbyterian order, he should ask his disjunction certificate of membership from his minister. He did so, but it was refused, to the great surprise of the writer. He came up to the following communion in St Jude’s, when the Kirk-Session had no difficulty in receiving him. Before he left for his home at Killellan, Campbeltown, where he lived on his own estate, he expressed the very great satisfaction he felt in his conscience that he was now a member of a Church against which no charge could be brought as to her adherence to the Bible in its entirety as the infallible Word of God. He attended regularly at each Communion season, and by his prayers at prayer meetings held on these occasions, he impressed our members in such a way that when we had an election of office-bearers two years ago, he was elected for the eldership.
The writer wrote him to this effect. He replied that he would consider it the greatest honour conferred on him in his life-time to become an elder in St Jude’s, and that he accepted the office. When he came up to be inducted, the writer gave him the Deed of Separation to read, and told him that he would be asked a question on the morrow as to whether he approved of it. He read it carefully, and then said—”I confess that had I considered as seriously as I should have done the condition of the Free Church in 1893, I would have been one of the first to break off from her communion, and to join in holding the doctrines and principles set forth in this “Deed of Separation.” On the morrow (the Lord’s Day), when the question was put—”Do you approve of the Deed of Separation?” he answered—”Yes, I do now with all my heart.” When he was up at our communion services last November, his general health was very good for a man of his advanced age. No one thought then that that was to be his last appearance in St Jude’s, but it took place according to God’s Word—”As for man, his days are as grass : as a flower of the field so he flourisheth. For the wind passeth over it, and it is gone; and the place thereof shall know it no more.”
On the 9th day of March he departed this life, after a few days’ illness. The writer learned at his funeral, which took place on the 15th to the family’s burying-place in Ayr Cemetery, that he had been up either at Glasgow or Edinburgh the week before the above dates, and that after returning home he became sick. The sickness took the form of pneumonia, to which he succumbed on the above date. He was 86 years of age.
It is now a comforting thought to us all that he manifested such faithfulness to the maintenance of the integrity of God’s Word at the end of his earthly pilgrimage, and that he adhered to its absolute infallibility and inerrancy even to the painful step of separating from the Church with which he had been identified during so many years. This proves that he valued the Bible more than any Church, and that he firmly believed that in it are the words of eternal life contained. To a man of his intelligence and integrity the effects of holding rationalistic views of the Bible are so manifest in the world at present as to demand compliance with the command—”Come out from among them, and be ye separate, saith the Lord.”
The writer desires to express his deepest sympathy with his family and relatives. “The righteous hath hope in his death.” N. C.