MR. Hugh Mackinnon was born at Barrhead, near Glasgow. His parents were natives of Islay. When he was about eighteen years of age the Holy Ghost awakened him to a deep sense of his lost state as a sinner before God. This took place during the dispensation of the Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper at Paisley. The godly Rev. Mr. Anderson of Rothesay was the human instrument used by the Spirit. Shortly after this he heard that eminent servant of Christ, Rev. Alexander Macintyre of Strontian, afterwards of New South Wales, Australia. The attachment formed between the two resembled in many ways that between Jonathan and David.
About the year 1855 Mr. Mackinnon left his native land and went out to Australia. He met with many hardships there. His first wife, whom he married shortly before he left Scotland, was taken from him by death, leaving no issue. He had, like all other pioneers to the forests either of Australia or Canada, to work hard in clearing away the great forest which completely covered the face of the earth in these parts; and he had to go about forty miles down one of the rivers on the Sabbath day to get to a place where he could hear the glad tidings of salvation. Not long after he settled there he was elected and ordained an elder to assist his friend, Mr. Macintyre. He remained in Australia for the space of sixteen years. On his return home he married the second time. Two years after he went to the United States and stayed there six years. He deplored exceedingly how awfully both ministers and people there had departed from the doctrines and principles of the Christian faith. Things were so contrary to his mind that he went only once during that time to any of their places of public worship, and baptized none of his children there. It was in the State of Massachusetts he sojourned in America. Finding things so far gone religiously there, he returned home. After a long search for a place where he could worship God with a clear conscience in Glasgow, he found the Rev. Ralph Smith’s (Knox’s Church), and remained there till after Mr. Smith retired. Finding then that things were not being done according to his mind, he left that congregation and went to the Milton. There he remained under the ministry of the Rev. John Geddes for six years till 1893, when he left that congregation and cast in his lot with the Free Presbyterian Church in its very beginning. That same year he was elected and inducted as an elder of the St. Jude’s congregation. It will be seen from the above sketch how much he resembled those of whom it is written that they confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth.
Mr. Hugh Mackinnon was a man who held very pronounced views concerning the duty of the Church of Christ to take God’s Word alone as her rule in doctrine and practice. He gave no place to any opinions of men which were not based upon that rock—God’s Word. He was a man that spoke very little about the faults of other men, but that did not cause him, when necessary, to avert vindicating his own convictions in public and in private. He had truly above many the courage to act, in the face of all opposition, according to truth and conscience. When his path of duty became clear to him he performed the same with an eye to the glory of God, and as being responsible to Him alone, not conferring with flesh and blood. Prayer was his strong fort. In public he used to be very brief. His conviction was deep of the corruption of man’s nature, of the sinfulness of every thought, word, and action of man, and of the awful majesty of God, against whom man sinned incessantly. He never lost sight of the infinite merit of the atonement and intercession of Jesus Christ as the one Mediator between a holy God and guilty men. We never heard him pray without imploring God for himself and others the need there is of the work of the Holy Spirit. Indeed, this might be said of him above many, that he prayed for the Spirit and in the Spirit. He loved them in whom he saw the image of Christ with a love unfeigned. But the Rev. Alexander Macintyre had a place in his affections peculiarly his own. None could spend much time with him without noticing this.
As a friend he was constant and faithful. To his amiable disposition it was exceedingly trying to separate from his friends, and nothing but duty to his conscience and his God could cause him do it. He always either kept silent altogether or said the best he had to say when the conversation happened to be about an opponent; and still he was far from being so slack as not to be quite ready, when necessary, to tell his opinion of a man’s misconduct to his face. The congregation of St. Jude’s has lost a very true friend at the throne of grace in him; we feel that, as a Session, we are much weaker by his removal; and the Free Presbyterian Church lost, in him, one who jealously watched her best interests. What we deplore as our great loss is his everlasting gain.
The last time he was at St. Jude’s was on the Saturday of our Communion, the 19th day of April. He was not able to walk up on the Sabbath, and would not travel by car or cab on the Lord’s Day. His trouble took the form of jaundice. He, for a few days, thought that he would recover, but ultimately he understood that it was the summons to bring him to his everlasting rest. He lingered, growing weaker in body every day (but not in faith), till the 22nd of June, when he passed away, to be for ever with Christ. His remains were buried on the 25th at Rothesay, where some of his children who predeceased him were buried. His mortal body rests there, still united to Christ, awaiting the blast of the trumpet which will awaken the dead at the last day. He will then stand in his place.
He has left a widow and two daughters to mourn his loss. We desire to express our deepest sympathy with them; for their loss is ours also. May the Lord be the Judge of the widow and the Father of the fatherless, is our prayer for them. “Most men will proclaim every one his own goodness: but a faithful man who can find?” N. C.