THERE passed away a few months ago, in Edinburgh, a venerable representative of the old Secession Church, whose demise deserves to be noted in the pages of this Magazine. We refer to Mrs. Scott, senior, who died at the house of her son, Rev. William Scott, Dalkeith Road, Edinburgh, on the 11th December, at the ripe age of eighty-seven years. Mrs. Scott had been ailing for some time, but had the use of all her faculties. One of her last messages, which was sent to her son, Rev. Walter Scott, Australia, was in these words: “Tell them Christ is precious to me. My hope, my trust, my confidence, are in Him,” adding, with tears in her eyes, “He is all my desire.” The deceased lady, we understand, was the last surviving daughter of John Macleod, a native of Dunvegan, Skye, and a cousin of the Rev. Roderick Macleod, the well-known minister of Snizort. On her mother’s side she was a descendant of John Stobo, a Covenanter who lived towards the end of the persecution period in Scotland, 1660-1688. Her parents both belonged to the old Secession Church. Her mother’s religious letters were printed for private circulation, and the memoirs of her grandfather, Thomas Stobo, were published after his death. The deceased, in her early days, had sat under the ministry of the Rev. Dr. Thomas M’Crie, the eminent biographer of Knox, and she remembered hearing the last sermon he preached, on the Sabbath previous to his death (1837), from the text, “Whose fan is in his hand, and he will thoroughly purge his floor, and gather his wheat into the garner; but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire” (Matt. iii. 12). Her husband predeceased her by several years. He was a worthy man, and had been elder and session-clerk in Newington under the late Rev. Dr. Begg, but he left the Free Church when innovations were beginning to be introduced. Now the aged widow has also been gathered to her fathers, full of years and respect, leaving an example and a memory that are savoury to her relatives and friends. What a blank is being made in the religious life of Scotland by the removal from time to time of so many aged trees of righteousness who bore the stamp of better days! “Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of his saints.”
J. S. S.