KINLOCHBERVIE.
JOHN M’LEOD was born in the year 1846 at Scourie, in the parish of Eddrachillis, Sutherlandshire. Of his parents it can be said that they were very respectable. His mother died when he was only eight years of age. His father was a strict observer of the Fourth Commandment, and gave a good example to his children. When the deceased came of age he went to sea with his father, while latterly he was in charge, as captain, of small vessels trading in the mercantile service till his health broke down. He then came home, about thirteen years ago. We cannot be sure when the spiritual change took place, but it was evident that there was a great change in him when he came home from the south, where he went to consult eminent physicians in regard to his disease, which was cardiac disease, accompanied with dyspepsia, which occasioned most severe pain. He was an untiring reader of the living word, and was much given to prayer, like the Psalmist of old. He was a great admirer of ministers of the stamp of the late Dr. Kennedy, Dingwall, whom he often heard. On Sabbath and week-days he conducted family worship morning and evening regularly, and read portions of the word privately daily. He also read audibly on Sabbath evenings such
1 In the Memoir of John Geddie, Abbotsford Miscellany, p. 362, we find him speaking of this hardship, “My place being taken from me then (1674), as now it is, because I would not comply with the English and subscribe their oath, called The Tender; yet, considering the estate was old for many hundreds of years, the love I had to preserve that old inheritance, made us, under God, toil much and labour to recover the same, which, by the blessing of God, I did,” &c. He paid 15,000 merks to relieve the estate.
books as Baxter’s “Saints’ Rest” and “Call to the Unconverted,” Boston’s “Fourfold State,” M’Cheyne’s Sermons, and Dyer’s “Christ’s Famous Titles,” the last named being the book he prized and loved most next to the Bible. He was also a diligent student in Church matters, and mourned over the departure of the Free Church from her Disruption moorings.
In 1893 he was among the first in this place who left the Church calling herself the Free Church of Scotland. He used to say that Revs. Messrs. M’Donald and M’Farlane were the true successors of Dr. Kennedy and Dr. Begg, and that their names, for what they did in separating from an unclean Church, would be held in grateful remembrance by the true people of God in all coming ages, when the names of the introducers of the new religion would stink in the nostrils of all. In the latter end of 1901, steps were taken by the Free Presbyterians here to erect a place of worship, he being the chief mover in the undertaking, which resulted in a handsome church of wood and iron being erected, which was opened in the summer of 1902.
After taking a journey to the Synod of the Free Presbyterian Church at Inverness in July, 1902, by the consent of the congregation, he was successful in having a missionary placed over the congregations at Scourie and Kinlochbervie. He was much rejoiced in spirit at the opening of the church, and we have heard him say that it was one of the happiest days he had on earth when he saw the Lord’s cause reviving, and the church which was built a standing testimony against the false and destructive tendencies of the age.
In September of 1902 his disease became very acute, and he was confined to bed. In October the first communion of the Free Presbyterians was held, but he was unable to attend through extreme weakness. He was elected as an elder, but was not ordained as he could not attend. It was very trying for him that he was not enabled to attend the first communion of the Free Presbyterian body, although he was the chief means in getting the place erected in which they assembled, but he was very much resigned. In the end of October he got a little better, and was able to rise daily and conduct family worship, but again being overcome by pain and weakness, he had to return to bed—the bed from which he never rose. He himself said that he would never rise from this bed of sickness. It was always his request on his death-bed to have the unerring and eternal Word read to him very often. A week before his death it was evident that his end was not far away. He was getting weaker and weaker daily, and was subject to convulsions; the last he took was on a Saturday, from which he did not rally. He passed peacefully away at 4.30 on Sabbath morning, the 18th of January, 1903. “Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord from henceforth. Yea, saith the Spirit, that they may rest from their labours, and their works do follow them.”—Rev. xiv. 13.
He was predeceased by his youngest daughter, who died, aged 15 years, in February, 1902, eleven months before him, and his wife, who died in August, 1900. He was buried beside his wife and daughter in Oldshoremore Cemetery on Wednesday, the 21st January, the remains being carried by a great assemblage of people who paid their last respects to his memory. What struck one most about him as a godly man was his genuine love for the written Word of God, his love for the true people of God, and his earnest desires and untiring efforts for the progress of the cause of Christ in the land.
“Help, Lord, for the godly man ceaseth: for the faithful fail from among the children of men.”—Psalm xii. 1.
Higher Criticism and Missions.
The following valuable and impressive letter has been received by the Rev. Dr. Kerr from Dr. Monro, medical missionary, Darjeeling, Bengal:—
LOCHNAGAR, DARJEELING, BENGAL,
September 21, 1903.
Rev. Sir,—A few mails ago an unknown friend sent me a little book published by you entitled “The Higher Criticism in Scotland: Disastrous Results, etc.” I have read it with the greatest interest and with the deepest thankfulness, for there can be no doubt whatever that this pernicious heresy of so-called Higher Criticism has done and is doing incalculable injury to the cause of the Lord Jesus Christ, especially by alienating our young men and young women from the old faith. I am specially interested to read your chapter headed “The Heathen Deceived,” in which you show most convincingly that if “critical” views are true, missions are a farce and a fraud. This teaching, as you may imagine, appeals powerfully to one who is a missionary in the field, and who as such wrote to The Christian the remarks which you quote in the chapter referred to. I feel very deeply that we cannot profess to work alongside of missionaries whose message is not the message of the Bible but of the Encyclopædia Biblica; and the sooner people at home awake to the fact that the message of the “critic” to the heathen is not the message of the missionaries of the Lord Jesus Christ the better. In a recently-published book called “Old Testament Critics,” Dr. Whitelaw, of Kilmarnock, has most powerfully pointed out that there can be no toleration of these “critical” and sceptical views, but that uncompromising rejection of the same is the only policy which can be honestly adopted by adherents of the old faith. And your cross-examination of Profs. G. A. Smith, Marcus Dods. and Denney very clearly emphasises the same conclusion. I send you reprint of an address which was lately given by the Rev. Mr. Reid of the United Free Church in Calcutta, and it seems to me simply deplorable that such teaching should proceed from one
who fills the pulpit from which that prince of missionaries, Dr. Duff, preached, and who holds the parish of which the veteran missionary, Dr. Murray Mitchell, for a time had charge.
The effect of this pernicious teaching on missionary work will be lamentable. And this is not a groundless conjecture, for already in a Moslem periodical, The Review of Religions, issued by a bitter opponent of Christianity, the adherents of the critical school are claimed as allies of Islam, and are called on to join with Moslems in repudiating the Bible and denouncing the false teaching of the Divinity of Jesus Christ. A reprint of the article from The Review of Religions I also send you, and I have called attention to it both in The Christian and in an article which I hope may appear in The East and the West for October. I cannot say whether it will so appear, but if it does you will be able to see how entirely I sympathise with your views as to missions being entirely incompatible with “critical” views.
I must apologise for the liberty which I, a stranger to you have taken in addressing you. The vital importance of the subject is my excuse. And I trust that the attention of all who are interested in Christian missions may be aroused to the fact that with the adoption of “critical” views missionaries have no message to deliver to non-Christians—certainly not the message which our Lord commissioned His disciples to proclaim, not the message which His Apostles delivered, not the message which Christendom of all ages has endorsed. If “Criticism” is true, then let missions cease; but if it is not true—then let “critical” missionaries be removed from the ranks of those who are trying to give the message of an inspired Bible, and of an infallible Christ, the Saviour of the world.—Yours very faithfully,
JAMES MONRO,
Director, Ranaghat Medical Mission, Bengal.
It has been our conviction for a number of years that the same pernicious errors in regard to the Bible, which has been permeating the larger Churches at home, were also being disseminated by their missionaries abroad. The above letter strongly confirms our opinion. Better almost it were that the heathen should never hear of Christ at all than that they should be put in possession of a false Christ, and sent into eternity with a lie in their right hand. It is appalling in the extreme to think of the havoc this infidel criticism must be working in the minds of people both at home and abroad, and it is matter of thankfulness that even one missionary lifts up his voice faithfully and loudly against it. May the Most High enable other missionaries to speak out with equal vigour!
Acknowledgment of Donations.—The Rev. Neil Cameron begs to thank “Cartridge” for £1, and “A Friend,” Tomatin, for 10s. in aid of St. Jude’s Building Fund.
A Forgotten Great Scotsman.
REV. ALEXANDER COMRIE, HOLLAND.
READING lately in the Catholic Presbyterian, a periodical now defunct, we lighted upon an interesting biographic sketch by Rev. Dr. Kuyper, of Holland. His subject is Alexander Comrie, an eminent Calvinistic minister who flourished in Holland between the years 1728 and 1774.
Alexander Comrie was a young Scotsman whose parents had sent him to pursue a commercial career in Holland that they might thereby divert his mind from an inclination towards the ministerial office. Unwittingly, however, they but paved the way for their son’s true life work, because through a wonderful providence Alexander became parish minister of Woubrugge, near Leyden, and was instrumental in doing notable service there both as a pastor and a witness for truth, in so much that while his fame lasted he seems to have been a Dutch edition of Dr. Kennedy, of Dingwall. His first introduction to this life work was on a certain evening in 1728 when, travelling by sea to a certain place, he was shipwrecked and cast ashore in straits. Lighting upon a certain farmhouse he desired shelter for the night, and was admitted with some degree of suspicion. He was accommodated in a room where his procedure could be watched. His first movement was to kneel down and give thanks in an audible voice for God’s good providence towards him and to invoke a blessing upon the farmer whose kindness was so opportune.
“Fancy,” says the biographer, “the farmer’s astonishment as he saw the poor wanderer, as soon as he imagined himself alone and unobserved, uncover his head, put off his coat, and, falling upon his knees, pour out his soul in a touching, fervent prayer to the Lord, giving thanks for his guidance and for the kindness he had met with. During his prayer there rose such a holy expression from the young man’s face that the farmer already felt quite ashamed of his unfavourable conjectures, a change of opinion ending in making him feel himself entirely his inferior, as placing his ear once more to the hole he heard the lad pleading most earnestly and fervently before the throne of grace that, if his entertainer might not be as yet converted to eternal life, the divine mercy might be bestowed upon him also and upon his family,”
It is related that this incident was the occasion of a gracious change on the farmer who had thus entertained “an angel unawares.” The object of Alexander’s journey to this place was to see with his eyes a work of revival that was in progress in the parish of Woubrugge. After a long interval of dead orthodoxy the Power from on High had visited that region and was raising up children to Abraham.
“There had been in this village for years and years, as Comrie himself afterwards told, nothing but a dead outward show of religion; there was much orthodoxy, and even knowledge leading
to a historical faith, but the power of the Lord was not manifested, the operation of the Holy Spirit did not show itself. It was the stillness of the tomb, not the sparkling of life and the beaming of light such as should be in a Christian community. But then there came from Benthuyzen, a little place two hours off, a God-fearing workman, who had been brought to know of the resurrection power of Christ by the faithful ministry of Van Noorden, a father in Christ for the whole neighbourhood. This plain workman felt as if the Lord had bound the whole village of Woubrugge upon his heart. He tried by every means to rouse the people from their lethargy, stirred up young and old to abandon their false trust, and never ceased to carry the souls of all around him before the throne of divine mercy in his prayers. Thus he went on for eight years, but without the least shadow of success, till finally, after nine years of quiet waiting, the Lord came down to answer his petition: now the seed had ripened, and Klaas Jansse Poldervaert—such was his name—hardly knew how to satisfy all the demands for spiritual direction that came to him day by day from different parts of the parish. So prominent and striking did this work of the Lord then appear that many came up every Sabbath from different places in the neighbourhood to witness the outpouring of spiritual blessing. And although the Rev. Mr. Blom, minister of the parish at that time, at first began by opposing the movement as throwing his ministry into the shade, still the revival proved so general and so continuous, and maintained such a high character, that he finally gave way, became a partaker of the unspeakable blessing for his own soul, and until his death in 1734 bore public testimony from the pulpit to the great and glorious work the Lord had done in his parish in his days, though without his instrumentality.”
Being introduced to two of the principal men of the parish—men of social standing as well as religious eminence—they were much taken with the stranger’s gifts and graces, and resolved that these should not be buried in a counting-house. Mr. Comrie had already received a good classical education, and they made proposals that he should proceed further and complete his college course with a view to the pastoral office. To this Alexander gladly agreed, and the result was that he became pastor of this same parish of Wonbrugge, and in spite of calls to other places he remained there till his retirement through physical weakness in 1773.
“From miles and miles in the neighbourhood all God-fearing people came to hear this godly man. And when he left his manse on the 4th of April, 1773, to spend the rest of his life in Gouda, Woubrugge and all its environs felt that in Comrie there had been granted to the Reformed Church a great man before the Lord, not only for Rhineland, but the whole United Provinces; a man not likely to be soon forgotten or easily replaced.
For a few months only was he to enjoy the sweet rest of retirement from office. His health had been already broken when he left his favourite village, and his weakness, as often happens, was soon aggravated by the want of his usual employment. Before the next year had reached its close, on the 10th of December, 1774, Comrie was born away to the heavenly mansions in the 66th year of his age, sweetly resting his wearied soul on the bosom of his Saviour.
In accordance with his wishes his burial was conducted in the simplest way. Not even an inscription was to indicate his tombstone in that huge city of Gouda, no doubt known to many of our readers for its uncommonly beautiful glass paintings. In his will he had expressly stipulated that no biographical notice should be entered in the “Church Review” after his death, so averse was he to all glorification of the creature and to the vanity of human pomp. And though we cannot but regret that, owing to this sober-mindedness, we are left in perfect ignorance of the further particulars of his life, still we submit not unwillingly to this deeply-felt want, glad as we are to find in Comrie once more the image of a genuine Calvinist—one who showed his detestation of all glorification of the creature, not merely in his sermons, but more severely still in what concerned his own life.”
His life was a lonely and studious one. He married in 1736 Miss Ivann de Heyde, a God-fearing woman, whose brother, Ian William de Heyde, was a favourite preacher at Rotterdam, but she died two years afterwards, and he did not marry again. A remarkable fact illustrating the power and spirituality of his ministration is the case of a criminal who was guilty of several acts of fire-raising in the village. It is reported that he was brought to public confession and true repentance by the fascinating and touching manner in which Comrie pled before the Lord, not against him, but for the salvation of his soul.
Mr. Comrie’s zeal for pure and undefiled religion is evidenced by the books which he was instrumental in circulating in Holland. He wrote several volumes himself on the subject of Justification and Saving Faith, and he translated or edited for the benefit of the Hollanders the following works:—Boston’s “Covenant of Grace,” “Marshall on Sanctification,” Shepherd’s “Ten Virgins,” Voetius’ “The Power of Godliness,” and “Chauncey’s “Westminster Catechism, Illustrated.”
The most strenuous element, however, of Comrie’s life work was his public controversy with a band of errorists in the high places of the Church, men who were bringing in pernicious heresies to the virtual undoing of the whole work of the Reformation. At first these novel opinions were circulated in Latin, and were accessible only to the learned. At last, however, they found their way into the pulpit, and the whole sound, God-fearing section of the people were alarmed. A second-rate preacher, Van den Os, was the first who broached the new views in the native tongue.
“He did not hesitate,” says Dr. Kuyper, “to attack successively, in his very first sermons, the eternal generation of the Son, the punishment of eternal death as the consequence of the first sin, the hereditary debt of Adam, and the judicial side of justification. All these questions, however, he treated more in an exegetical way, as if depending merely upon a correct understanding of such texts as—Micah v. 2, Ps. ii. 7, I John v. 26, Gen. iii. 22, and Rom. iii. 23; hence these extravagances did not rouse the suspicion of the people at large. But when at last he did not shrink from declaring that our justification before God was a mere consequence or result of our individual faith, the godly people at once perceived that their inexperienced pastor was slipping the poison of rationalism into the Confession of their fathers, and that the error of Pelagianism was again obscuring the true relationship between God the Saviour and the saved sinner; and they determined not to leave the decision of the conflict to science and dialectics, but to take it in hand as an ecclesiastical body. In a few weeks this apparently local conflict spread all over the country, and very soon divided almost the whole nation into two hostile camps. On one side were arrayed all the power and influence of the magistrate and State University, and on the other the real spiritual power of the godly amongst the people, the ministers, and the ecclesiastical government. The town council of Zwolle, the provincial council of Overyssel, and even Prince William IV. of Orange stood up, not so much for Van den Os himself, as for the untettered progress of rationalism; while the Theological Faculty of Leyden apologised for the heterodoxy of the extravagant young minister, as not so much exceeding the boundaries of the articles of the Church. On the other hand the defence of the old Scriptural truth was conducted in a fair, vigorous, and decisive manner, first by almost all the colleagues of Van den Os; secondly, by the kirk-session of Zwolle; thirdly, by the classical and provincial synods or assemblies, and more powerfully still by the two sagacious and able theologians, Alexander Comrie and his friend Holtius.”
Dr. Kuyper relates that the agitation carried on by the sound party was successful in bringing about the suspension of Van den Os from the ministry. But the controversy, especially regarding the right place and office of faith in justifying the sinner, went on for a number of years in much the same manner as the contemporaneous Marrow Controversy in Scotland, and the Boston of the Dutch Church was Alexander Comrie. The point of this debate may be fine, but nevertheless the issues depending thereon are practical and important in the highest degree. The one party maintained that faith justifies because it is a commanded duty, and because it contains in itself the germ of a complete obedience to the law of God, and the other maintained that faith justifies not from any merit in itself as an act, but solely because it is the empty hand that receives the all-sufficient righteousness of Christ.
This position, and the related doctrines of Calvinism in connection therewith, were expounded and defended with great zeal and ability by Alexander Comrie and several of his associates during this campaign, and they procured to themselves a good degree, Comrie, as we stated, retired from active service in 1773 and died in 1774, aged 66 years. His fame endured for several generations, and by Dr. Kuyper’s articles in the “Catholic Presbyterian” twenty years ago, and this notice in the “Free Presbyterian Magazine,” is providentially rescued from oblivion, and some fulfilment is thus made of the word, “The righteous shall be in everlasting remembrance.”
J. M’N.