THE heedless sons of men are often reminded of their frailty, and of the fact that all have sinned, when death comes to palace and cot, and carries away those who have reached the time set in the counsels of God, when they must appear before the great White Throne. During the closing days of April, the messenger on the pale horse came to Lairgmuir, Sutherlandshire, to a man who, to look upon some time before then, would seem likely to live many years in the full enjoyment of health.
Such a man was the late John Macdonald. He entered life about 71 years ago in that same spot. Though brought up in a Christian family, he left, at an early age, his native soil, a stranger to grace and to God, to go to the Colonies, like many others, in quest of gold. There he worked for some time, anxious for nothing but the treasure hid in the belly of the earth, like the rest of the ruined race of our progenitor. Blinded by the god of this world to all that is glorious and just, we bury ourselves in the things that perish in the using. Yet, although the subject of this sketch then tried to make himself happy in this way, he acknowledged afterwards that the Spirit of the Lord, striving with him, caused him sometimes to resort to the Word of God and to his knees. But still he had no foundation but the sand of his own endeavours upon which the majority build for an endless eternity, to find themselves at last carried away by the rapids of death to the bottomless ocean of eternal misery. How sad to see so many showing that they are still on the broad way to destruction! But as the Lord’s time was drawing near that John Macdonald should be plucked as a brand from the burning, he had to leave the Colonies behind, and to set his face on his father’s house, that the message might come from the Father of Spirits, which was to call him, like the prodigal son, from a far country of ignorance, enmity and guilt, to that of light, love and peace.
The instrument the Lord took to use the sword of the Spirit to wound him with conviction, I have not been able to find out, but I was led to understand that, under the preaching of the late Rev. Duncan Campbell, of Kiltearn, the dried and barren wilderness of his soul was turned into a water-spring, and from his own lips I had it that at that season he thought he should and could make all men see and feel what he enjoyed, as all babes in grace are ready to think. But experience taught him that the veil spread over all faces can in nowise be drawn aside by the weak arm of a worm of the dust—that it takes the power of Him who alone can hold up the canopy of heaven as a scroll, to remove the covering from the face of poor sinners. It would seem that some doubted the work done in him at the time, but his after life, in walk and conversation, showed that the work was of God.
It seems that in his first days as a convinced sinner he had many temptations, and to the very end, the tempter seemed to throw his fiery darts at his soul. Though naturally very reserved, he would break out at times, exposing the prince of the power of the air, with his hellish devices, in a way that few could follow him. While yet young, he had a presentiment that he would lose his eyesight, and with all his power he began to commit the Word of God and the Shorter Catechism to memory, which proved good to his own soul and useful to others in after days. He loved to read, and would spend most of his time among his books, Luther being his favourite author. He abhorred the time spent by many reading the newspapers, and would always advise the young to be reading their Bibles and good books instead.
At the time the Free Church changed her creed (1892), he had no hesitation in leaving, along with others who felt that they would have to give an account for how they would treat the testimony of Jesus Christ. And for years he proved himself a lover of good men who then kept meetings in the place, and as one by one these had to answer the call from eternity, the burden of the work fell upon him. But the Lord was upholding him, and although often tempted of the Evil One in ways that others did not know, he would not give up as long as he could walk, and even went when he could do no longer without help. He always spoke about the shortness of our time here, and how our place in eternity depended on the way we spent the span of time allotted to us, and often used the words, “Eternity, to which we are going.” About a year before he died, he said to the writer, “I got the time allotted to men in the Word of God, and I don’t think my time here is to be long now.” But to appearance, one would have thought that he had a long time, but the thoughts of men are not the thoughts of the Lord. Some time before his death, he got very free in speaking about the Lord’s dealings with his soul, and how the Evil One tempted him that it was all a delusion, and as someone remarked that he “should not be telling the like of that,” he replied, “It may be useful to them when they cannot see me.” Some will not forget some of the things they heard from him shortly before he died.
As a speaker at the Friday Question Meetings, his hearers could not but observe that his was a mind stored with God’s Word, and although some might excel him in other respects, he appeared to be behind none in his knowledge of the Scriptures; and yet he felt to the last his need of the Spirit to enable him to get comfort in the words that came to his mind.
As the end was drawing near, his mind seemed to be more with the saints that went home some time before, and, among others, he often spoke of Hugh Mann, Spinningdale, as a man whom he loved above many, and who seemed to follow him in all his wanderings in early life. He would sometimes weep when he felt his soul without the presence of the Lord, and although he would be reminded as to what he had in the morning, he would say—”What will that do for me now? I need it now.” The week he died he seemed to have a feast of fat things on the words, “For He hath made Him to be sin for us, who knew no sin, that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him” (2 Cor. v. 21). But even after that the enemy seemed to rob him of his comfort, for he said to some, “I find nothing in me but sin, but I know there is enough in Christ for me.” Such is the way the Lord brings the mariners of grace to His heavenly kingdom. “They mount up to heaven, then to the depths they do go down again, their soul doth faint and melt away with trouble and with pain.” But the Lord changes the storm into a calm at His command and will, and brings His own thrice loved ones to the haven they desire to see. Those who watched and tried to make his bed for him in the time of trouble he often admonished to seek the Lord while He was to be found. The trouble which ended his course being heart affection kept him uneasy, but in the midst of pain his cry was for preparation for the journey to the other world. Thus, while tempted to the very last, but enabled by the Lord to look above the temptation to Him who bruised the head of the serpent, John Macdonald ended his course in this wilderness of sin and sorrow to begin in eternity, where to some their sun will never go down, nor will their moon be darkened, and the days of their mourning shall be ended, but where to Christ’s rejecters their worm dieth not, and the fire shall not be quenched. Who can comprehend the miseries that shall consume such away? And as the subject of these lines often warned those within his hearing, but especially the young, to seek Christ while He was to be found, may the Spirit of the Lord send His arrows to their hearts that they may fall under Christ and become His willing servants! “Thy people shall be willing in the day of Thy power.”
E. M’Q.