Trees of Frankincense, Free Presbyterians of East Sutherland and North-East Ross, compiled by Ruth Daubney, 356 pages; hardback, £24.95; paperback, £15.99; obtainable from the Free Presbyterian Bookroom.
This attractive book contains accounts of over 60 men and women who lived in, or were at least connected with, the districts mentioned in the title, more specifically the area covered by the present Free Presbyterian congregation meeting in Dornoch and Bonar Bridge. All the ministers who served in the congregations now combined into the one just mentioned, and had already passed away at the time when the book was compiled, are represented here. So are many other men and women, living in these districts during the period covered by the book, who professed Christ.
A wealth of spiritual experience is recorded here, and there are many interesting sidelights on the church history of these districts over the best part of 200 years. Most of the accounts are taken from obituaries which appeared in The Free Presbyterian Magazine. Occasionally some extra information is given in footnotes. The title of the book is taken from the Song of Solomon 4:14.
There follow here some extracts from a few of the obituaries, chosen almost at random; they help to illustrate the spiritual quality of those whose memory is recorded in the volume under review.
We begin with Angus Gray of Lairg: “He said: ‘I was three years an elder before I knew anything of the power of grace. I was often praying when I was a boy, and when I became a young man I had great pleasure in praying in the woods. I was not taken up with vain company and was on good terms with myself. One day I met Mr MacGillivray, the minister, who said to me, “I think it is your duty to join the Church; you are making a private profession when you go to pray in the woods, and it is your duty now to make a public profession”. I told him I had no thought of that, but he said, “Go and pray in the woods about it, and tell me afterwards”. I did as he wished me and had very joyful, light thoughts about it. Soon after that I was called to pray in meetings, and people were thinking well of me, and I was of the same opinion myself. By and by they made me an elder.
“I was not long in that office when I began to know the strength of sin and the terrors of the Lord. I fell into such a deep thought that I could not read nor pray, and a spirit of perfect atheism came over me. I could not believe that there was a God. I felt very miserable, and had it not been that I had a wife and family I would have fled from the country. One day, as I was going along the road driving a horse and cart, the words, “Our God is a consuming fire”, came like thunder. These words filled me with fear, and I felt as if between two hedges, an angry God on the one side and the broken law on the other, and my heart filled with enmity against both. For some months I was in that fearful pit. Then it was He sent His Word and healed me. The words in 1 John 4, “Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us, and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins”, were made peculiarly precious to me then. Then I had great joy in the finished work of the Redeemer, and you see I needed a sore cure for the false religion of my younger days, when I thought my love and joy and prayers had gotten me the land.’
“On being asked how long this happiness remained, and if the atheism returned, he continued, ‘I have often been troubled with the unbelief of my heart, but never had again the same spirit of atheism, and my joy lasted a considerable time. Sometime after my deliverance I heard Dr Kennedy preach in Creich, and he spoke of the love of Christ, and so described my case that I was drunk with joy, and when I came out of the church I might as well have been in a foreign land for all I knew where I was.’ . . .
“Although he attained the great age of 94 years, his faculties remained unimpaired to the end. He had an unusually deep sense of sin. Some months
before the end he complained bitterly . . . of his great sinfulness, but he said his hope was built upon that word: ‘I, even I, am He that blotteth out Thy transgressions’.
“The last days of his life were by far the most joyous. His cup was at last made to run over. . . . The doctrine which towards the very end was most firmly fixed in his mind was the love of the Father.”
Andrew Tallach was an elder in Dornoch, before he was appointed a missionary in Lochinver and later in Raasay. Rev Neil Cameron wrote, “An outstanding characteristic of Mr Tallach was the patience with which he could bear fiery trials and reproaches. He very seldom said one word to defend his own interests, but could not bear that God’s truth and cause should be allowed to suffer so far as it was in his power to vindicate the same. ‘When He suffered, He threatened not, but committed Himself to Him that judgeth righteously’, was truly his way in dealing with such as opposed him.
“In his duties as an elder he was unbending in the use of discipline, believing that by so doing he would not only maintain peace in God’s house, but that it was also his duty in performing his ordination vows to God and men. This was true of him from the day he was ordained to that office. It was quite evident that he did this not from a vindictive spirit against any man. In carrying on his work as a missionary he knew nothing among the people, and did not desire to know anything, save Jesus Christ and Him crucified. This was the object for which he laboured from day to day. In carrying out this purpose, he spent much time in prayer; sometimes he spent the whole day in private prayer and meditation. . . .
“His mental vigour and solid grasp of the doctrines of grace, both as to practice and experience, came to light very vividly when speaking at fellowship meetings on the Friday of communion seasons. He kept always to the point raised . . . and never interfered in harangues on extraneous matters. Precision in the treatment of the experience of the Lord’s people, with a peculiar power of adaptation of Scripture thereto, made his exercises on such occasions very helpful to the poor and needy. His real aim was to ‘strengthen . . . the weak hands and confirm the feeble knees. . . .’ Neil Mackinnon, Portree, who was, without exaggeration, a prince among the laymen of the Church, held Andrew Tallach in great veneration and esteem, and often spoke of him as a dear brother in Christ.”
We conclude with Ellen Logan, from the parish of Creich, where Bonar Bridge is the main village: “Ellen must have become the subject of a saving change very early in life, for she was heard to say that the greatest realisation she had of the love of God shed abroad in the heart was when, as a girl on her knees, she prayed by her own bedside. That these early experiences
were not of the evanescent kind, her deep and solid piety during a long life amply demonstrated. . . .
“There was a large number of prayerful men who conducted prayer meetings in several parts of the parish week by week. The prayer meeting on which Ellen Logan waited was that at Ausdale, conducted by Gustavus Munro, Hugh Graham, William Murray and other eminently pious men. To the very last it was a joy to her when she recalled and could rehearse to her friends what Gustavus Munro said, or any of these worthies said. Once, she related, she went to the prayer meeting with the feeling that she was spiritually much more dead than alive. To her surprise, one of the first things Gustavus Munro said was: ‘You are here thinking you should not be present at all, such is the death you find yourself in; but if you were dead, you would not feel yourself dead’ – or words to the same effect. A saying of Hugh Graham’s that she often quoted in her heaviest troubles was in the sense that: ‘We are not pleased when we have trouble, neither are we quite pleased when we are without trouble’.”
The book is warmly recommended.