The subject of this short sketch was born in Aultbea, in the north part of the Parish of Gairloch. In his young days he was ecclesiastically connected with the United Free Church, his people being of that Church after the Union in 1900, a matter he often spoke of with regret, that he spent so many years in that degraded ecclesiastical institution, and was not always a Free Presbyterian. As a young man he was like many others of the fallen race of Adam, fond of the vanities of this world. But though he could not say with David, “I have not sat with vain persons,” yet he was always restrained from flagrant sins.
The portion of scripture to which he attributed his awakening to a sense of his lost state is: “Because I have called, and ye refused; I have stretched out my hand, and no man regarded; But ye have set at nought all my counsel, and would none of my reproof: I also will laugh at your calamity; I will mock when your fear cometh; when your fear cometh as a desolation, and your destruction cometh as a whirlwind; when distress and anguish cometh upon you. Then shall they call upon me, but I will not answer; they shall seek me early, but they shall not find me” (Prov. i. 24-28). He was for a long while pursued by this Scripture, he said. The time of deliverance came; and it was the Lord’s own time, and the Lord’s own means. They were the words of Paul the Apostle: “Let us therefore come boldly unto the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy, and find grace to help in time of need” (Heb. iv. 16), having in view the preceding context, concerning the “great high priest.” It was here, he always maintained, that he got the liberty of the gospel. It will be noticed by those who knew him that he often quoted these passages of Scripture in prayer and when speaking to the question. We cannot say at what period of his life this was. He was rather late in life before he asked the Kirk Session for the privilege of sitting at the Lord’s Table—it was in the year 1940. We, however, remember the Rev. R. MacKenzie, then minister of Gairloch, telling us, if John MacLennan had asked for the privilege of sitting at the Lord’s Table when he came to the Kirk Session for baptism for his infant son in the year 1926 the Session would have received him then, as a member in full communion. That can be understood by the entry in the Kirk Session records regarding his examination in knowledge and experience then.
He was elected a deacon in 1945, and three years after to the office of the eldership. As an office-bearer he conducted himself in a gospel manner, and being an intelligent man he could be asked to give an address at meetings when need arose.
He was a joiner to trade. The most of his life was spent as an estate joiner, first in the service of Sir Alexander Gibb of Gruinard, and for the last 30 years of his life in the service of Sir Hector Mackenzie, on the Gairloch estate. He gained the full confidence of his employers as a man of real integrity and conscientiousness. He served his King and country throughout the whole of the 1914-18 war. He was in the Lovat Scouts where he reached the highest rank of non-commissioned officers—that of sergeant-major. When the war broke out in 1914 he was called up and saw fighting abroad in Egypt and the Dardanelles. He was at the Dardanelles when the forts were bombarded and troops landed on the peninsula under appalling difficulties and against the fiercest opposition. When the men were landed, and when he saw them mowed down by the enemy he felt that death was very near to himself, which made a deep impression on him. In after days he saw that it was the Lord who preserved him and could say: “O God the Lord, the strength of my salvation, thou hast covered my head in the day of battle.” He had pleurisy while in Egypt and was seriously ill. This trouble came back periodically till the end of his days and resulted in his being not very robust although able to continue his work.
In his personal character our friend was of a quiet humble disposition, sincere and upright in all his dealings, both in the church and in the world, a man of good intelligence and understanding, and often willing to submit to the opinion of others but not prepared to compromise on any principle. His last illness began nearly two years before he died. His memory became deficient in worldly matters, but in the Scriptures his mind was still alert, and he took great delight in reading them. Other symptoms began to show such as swelling in the legs, which showed that the earthly tabernacle was beginning to crumble.
The end came rather suddenly on the 29th of August, 1953, in his 77th year. We extend our deepest sympathy to his sorrowing widow and son.—A. B.