OUR last number, in announcing the death of Jessie Macleod, Strathy Point, Sutherlandshire, intimated that a fuller account of this worthy woman might be looked for in an early issue of the Magazine. It is with a view to fulfil this promise that the writer essays this sketch, though he has the feeling that it is difficult, if not impossible, to find adequate expression in words for a life that was in itself an epistle of Christ, written by His Spirit.
Jessie Macleod was born in Strathnaver in the year 1819. Before she was a year old her parents, along with many others, became the victims of a ruthless process of eviction, whereby Strathnaver, a glen extending from the sea inwards to an extent of nearly thirty miles, and thickly peopled, was, at the time we write of, depopulated. Jessie’s parents came to reside in Strathy Point, a part of Sutherlandshire which up to that time was practically a waste. The poor people thus evicted suffered great hardships for many a year, and the family of which Jessie was a member must, doubtless, had their own share of these hardships. Jessie’s maternal grandmother, Mary MacBeth, who was at this time a widow, lived with Jessie’s parents until her death, which took place in the year 1842. Mary MacBeth, though greatly afflicted in body, was an eminently pious woman, whose name is fragrant in the memory of a few living in those parts to the present day. Doubtless the instructions of Mary, and others such as she, had an influence for good upon the minds of the people generally, so as to incline them to recognise the just Hand of God in all that befel them, when they were cast out by land-superiors from what had been the home of their ancestors from time immemorial. It was at the knee of this pious grandmother that Jessie was taught her first lessons in the fear of God.
We are not able to say at what time the good work began in Jessie; but from the profound regard she had for Mary MacBeth’s memory, and from the number of her sayings and doings which to the end of her days she took delight in rehearsing, we are safe in saying that the seed thus sown in her infant mind must at some time have taken root, and, through the blessing of the Highest, during a long lifetime it evidently yielded rich fruit. The public and general means of grace were not very accessible then. The Parish Church of Farr was about ten miles distant from Strathy Point; there was no church in Strathy in those days. And yet we cannot think of the locality as religiously cold at this time. For John Grant had not yet left Strathy, when Strathy Point became peopled, and there were several eminent Christians, both men and women, whom the evictions had forced into this physically uninviting part of the country about the year 1820. Thus Jessie’s childhood and girlhood, we have reason to think, were spent more or less under the influence of the best associations of those days.
Although it was when she was about thirty years of age (as will be referred to later on) that she had a deeper experience of law work, and of the power of the gospel than at any time previously, yet Jessie may be said from a girl to have been a companion of the Lord’s people. Jessie would have been but in her teens, when, in the company of Mary Macleod, the equally pious sister of the well-known Mrs. Gustavus Munro, Creich, she proceeded to Wick, to earn with her companion a livelihood in the humble capacity of herring worker. A straw will sometimes shew how the wind blows, and an incident is recorded of Jessie at this time, which as indicating the bent of her mind at an early age, I shall venture to record. This Mary Macleod and Jessie slept in one bed. On the very first Sabbath, I suppose it was, of their stay in their lodgings, Mary, on awakening in the morning was horrified to find their landlady busily employed in washing clothes. Mary, in the spirit of the psalmist (Psalm cxix. 136) wept bitterly at the sight. “What ails you?” said the landlady, “I will call in the doctor, if you are ill.” “Nothing ails me,” said Mary, “but to see you breaking, as you do, the Sabbath day.” “If that’s all,” was the rejoinder, “greet you on, I have seen many a lady that would do as I am doing.” “Many’s the ladies that go to hell,” said Jessie, seeking to strengthen her friend Mary’s attitude.
Mary is said, at that time, to have earnestly besought the Lord to command His blessing to come upon her companion, for having come to her help that day, and that prayer, as all who knew and could appreciate Jessie’s worth could testify, was richly answered. It would have been but shortly after this that another incident which the writer remembers Jessie to have related in his hearing took place, and which, as it is of a nature to lead one to think that probably the root of the matter was found with her at this early date, is here rehearsed. It must, I should think, have been the first occasion on which she seriously thought of trying to earn something for herself and her household, as a reaper, for some weeks in autumn on one of the large Caithness farms. Whether it was from the tenderness of her years, or because she had recently been in ill-health, she feared that she might not be able to endure the fatigue of a harvest’s work. At that time there lived in Armadale, a distance of scarcely three miles away, a Mrs. Mackay, better known as Jane Armadale, who was, perhaps, next to Peggy M’Dermid, “the woman of great faith,” the most remarkable Christian woman then living on the northern coast. Jessie thought of consulting Jane for advice, and on her shortly afterwards paying Jane a visit, told her what was in her mind, and how she feared that she might not be able to bear the fatigue of a reaper’s work in harvest. Jane retired for a short time to her barn, and when she returned, said to Jessie that she ought to venture, and added—”Whenever you come to a new field, you will say, ‘The sword of the Lord, and of Gideon.” Jessie took Jane’s advice, went to the harvest work, and whenever she and her companions commenced to reap a new cornfield, she uttered the words, “The sword of the Lord, and of Gideon.” It was Jessie’s own testimony that though that was the season in which she was physically most unfit for her task, it was the lightest harvest’s work she knew in all her experience.
When she was little more than thirty years of age, she was on one occasion similarly employed at harvest work in Caithness. Her engagement was but partially fulfilled, when she got word of the serious illness of her brother Roderick, a young man of much promise, and a brother to whom Jessie was devotedly attached. On hearing the alarming news she at once hastened home, but ere she arrived, he had finished his course. It was a blow to her from which in a manner she may be said never to have recovered. That autumn was certainly the last time Jessie was able to serve as a reaper. Shortly after her brother’s death, she had what appears to have been rheumatic fever, whereby she lost in a large degree the use of one of her hands as well as one of her legs. It was at this time also that she was thrown into the deepest soul conflicts of her life. However it may now appear to us, it seemed to her then that she was soon to appear before the Judgment seat of God, and that she was a stranger to His saving grace. That the good Physician who had mercifully and skilfully diagnosed her disease, led her also to look at the true cause of her troubles, may be evidenced from a single incident which she sometimes told of her experiences at that time. William Campbell, a Catechist, then in the Strathy district, and a judicious as well as a very pious man, came to see her in those days. “O, I sinned,” said Jessie to him, “as much as ever I could.” “Put it not so,” said the Catechist, “but say rather that you sinned as much as it had been permitted to do.” Although she was in due time, through the manifestation of the truth of the gospel in her conscience, brought out of this horrible pit, and had, through grace, a good hope vouchsafed her when brought to rely upon the Rock, Christ, it may truly be said that a deep sense of personal unworthiness was ever afterwards one of the most striking traits of her character as a Christian.
One who knew her intimately in her later years, writes:—“The faith that Jessie had was a tried faith. She was often, as the psalmist says, at one time mounting up to heaven, and at another time going down into the depths. Christians undergo many changes in their soul’s experience, and the world, that lies in darkness, does not know them, because there is as great a difference between the Christian and the worldling as there is between light and darkness. The worldlings know little about sin and its wages, know less about the heart and its desperate wickedness, know least about the long-suffering of the Lord, and the glory of Christ. To the Christian these things become matters of the greatest importance, and when they get to see into the depth of the heart and are enclosed as it were in that prison they are at their wit’s end. Jessie had spiritual sight, and might be often found at her wit’s end on account of the sights she was getting of her own depravity, and at such seasons she was liable to be misunderstood by those who were themselves free from changes. But although she was often in darkness she was often enjoying the light, and we might say, as far as we knew her, that her life was equally divided, the seasons of sorrow being counter-balanced by seasons of gladness.”
For the remaining fifty years of her life, Jessie was always an invalid, yet during all that time she was evidently a lamp which the Lord Himself had lit, and which burned with a very pure light, indeed, during full half a century. From this time she became the prized companion of the pious women, for which, it used to be said, Strathy Point was much noted. They were such persons as Mrs. John Macleod (Millburn), Mrs. John MacIntosh, “one of the weary women,” as one remembers Rev. Christopher Munro to have said at the time of her death; Mrs. John Mackay (Auchanellan), Mrs. John Robertson, and others. With these Jessie, while they lived, took sweet counsel, and in their society grew up in the graces of the Spirit. The writer at one time possessed some verses of poetry, in which the subject of this memoir gave vent to her feelings when some of those excellent ones of the earth had visited her, and she felt extremely sad at their departure.
From the year 1862 to the year 1885 Strathy was privileged with a lively Gospel ministry, first in the pastorate of the Rev. Malcolm MacRitchie, and afterwards in that of the Rev. Christopher Munro. We speak only what we know in asserting that, as Jessie on her part had the deepest attachment to those servants of Christ for their works’ sake, so they on their part appreciated Jessie on account of her piety as they did few besides within the congregation. For at this time Jessie was so far restored as to be able as a rule to attend the public means of grace within the congregation to which she belonged, and occasionally to venture on communion seasons as far as the neighbouring parishes of Farr and Reay. At the latter place she used to hear the late Rev. Mr. Macdonald, Fearn, whose ministry she found greatly blessed to her. In the summer of 1875, Dr. Kennedy assisted at the Strathy communion services, and although for some time previously Jessie’s frailties were weighing her down so much that she had been unable to attend church, at this time special strength appears to have been vouchsafed her, so that for five days in succession she joined the company of those who attended the communion services. But that communion season over, she was ever afterwards practically confined to her house. Her reading was confined to the Bible, the Westminster symbols, and such authors as Boston, Flavel, and Doddridge. It is questionable if she ever took up a newspaper to read; but she followed the Lord’s public cause with most prayerful and solicitous interest.
It was a great comfort to the people in those parts who felt compelled to rally round the testimony for truth which Rev. Mr. Macfarlane was in 1893 enabled to unfurl, that Jessie Macleod so soon became identified in heart and life with that cause, and we are very much mistaken if about that time her own piety had not assumed a richer, and, to herself, more comforting form. Her little room, where she dwelt alone, under the shadow, however, of her kind brother’s house, was quite in the vicinity of the school-house where the Free Presbyterian services have since 1893 been held ; and at communion seasons especially, when ministers and leading laymen from far and near gathered together with many of the Lord’s people day by day in her house, many on such occasions felt that it was good for them to be there. For the atmosphere she breathed seemed to be so heavenly, and the Word of God revealed itself to her with such demonstration and with such power, that one felt there was more significance attaching to a few words of Scripture uttered by her than to many a sermon. Yet it would be a mistake to think that she was always thus bright. She was, indeed, a woman of a broken and contrite spirit all her days, and her afflictions and pains both in mind and body were often great. To give an instance which at the moment occurs of some of her wrestlings : One night (she related to a friend) Satan, who seemed to impress her as actually present, troubled her greatly. She had heard it said that if one were to take the truth as one’s shield, Satan would depart ; ” but,” said she, ” although I took the Word to him, he would not go away from me. At last I told the Lord how helpless I was, and that it was now that I needed His strength. When I finished telling the Lord my helpless condition, Satan vanished.”
Yet she was wonderfully sustained through all her conflict and weakness to a good old age. Need it be said, that the Word of the Lord was her strength and her stay. Speaking not long since to a friend of a portion of truth that came to comfort her, she remarked, in her unique way, ” It arose, my dear, like a lily in my mind.” When she was thus favoured she took great delight in commending Christ, whom she almost invariably spoke of as the Eternal Love (an Gaol bith bhuan) to others. About a year before the end one who went in to see her found her in tears, and on enquiring what was troubling her, was told that she was thinking about the swellings of Jordan, and how she was to get over. The person to whom she said this told her what a pious author had said about the Lord’s people when they came to die, getting dying grace, and also spoke to her about the straits out of which the Lord had delivered her in the past, and asked her if she thought it consistent that, after having done so much for her, He would forsake her at last. This seemed to draw her attention to the Lord’s great goodness to her in the past, from which she appears to have got some reviving, for she thereupon remarked, ” I should not be like this, my dear ; I should think more of the Love.”
Jessie suffered a good deal since the beginning of this year, having then caught a severe cold. For a few days before the very end—an event which came to her as something fully expected—she apparently rallied a little bit. Mrs. Macleod, her sister-in-law, most kindly and attentively waited upon her, and ministered to her needs to the end. Kind friends also from many places took delight in ministering by their means to her needs, so that in these respects she had all things and abounded. She finished her beautiful course about one o’clock in the afternoon of Saturday the twenty-first day of April of this year. Her funeral took place on the following Tuesday, and was attended by a very large concourse of people. According to her own wish, her remains were laid in what had been the burying place of her pious grandmother, and ten years afterwards of her beloved brother Roderick. Two brothers, one of whom is an elder in the Free Presbyterian Congregation of Strathy, survive her, and towards them we would express our sincere sympathy and condolence. The place where she dwelt has by her removal been rendered cold and lonely, and a blank has been made that will be felt, not only by friends at home, but by friends at a distance, who felt it a privilege to visit her and to witness the grace of God in her saintly personality and savoury conversation. But our cause of weeping is not for her, but on our own account—as she has gone “to be with Christ, which is far better.”
J. R. M.