ANOTHER worthy elder has been removed from St. Jude’s Congregation, Glasgow. This is the fourth of our godly elders taken away since 1893, and we have yet a deep sense every Lord’s Day of the gap made in the Congregation by the removal of each of them. To see the places once occupied by them each Sabbath day and Prayer Meeting night empty, keeps the wound open from year to year. This is also true concerning many others, both of our deacons and members. Our consolations are that we are assured by the Word of God that Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and to-day and for ever; that they who sleep in Christ Jesus God will bring with Him; and that He is able to raise up children to Abraham of the stones. Nevertheless we feel with the Prophet Isaiah that “The righteous perisheth, and no man layeth it to heart: and merciful men are taken away, none considering that the righteous is taken away from the evil to come.”
Murdoch Macdonald was a native of Ullapool, Ross-shire. He came to Glasgow about forty years ago, he being then about twenty-two years of age. From his childhood he was orderly and careful in his conduct outwardly. He had also some impressions made on his mind concerning his responsibility as a sinner in the sight of God very early in life, under the faithful ministry of the late Rev. George Macleod, who was at that time minister of the Free Church at Ullapool. He held, to the end of his life, Mr. Macleod’s memory in great reverence for his faithfulness to God’s truth and the souls of the poor people under his charge. It was, however, after he came to Glasgow that he underwent a saving change. But being very reticent about the experiences through which he passed at that time, we are not in a position to say much about them. That he had very deep impression made on his mind, of the holy claims of the law of God on the sinner, none who ever heard him pray or speak in public could doubt. The portion of God’s Word which relieved his distress and opened his heart to the consolations of the Gospel was, “Yea, I have loved thee with an everlasting love; therefore with loving kindness have I drawn thee” (Jer. xxxi. 3). This truth came to his mind while at a Prayer Meeting. He was an adherent of Mains Street Free (Gaelic) Church at the time, and in it he continued to worship till 1893. He was made an elder in that Congregation some time after he was savingly changed.
The flood of materialism and atheism which drifted the Free Church from her moorings into the dark and boundless abyss in which her former adherents were even then beginning to wander, caused him very much anxiety and grief. He noticed the earliest beginnings of these God-dishonouring and soul-ruining departures from God’s Word and the Confession of Faith and the doctrines of the Reformation. When we became acquainted with him in the year 1892 his mind was very much exercised by the changes which were taking place in doctrines, form of worship, discipline, and especially on account of the treatment the Bible and the Lord’s Day received at our hands as a generation. He often urged on us the absolute necessity of refusing to surrender one jot of God’s Word, or make any compromise in order to have the name of Church fellowship with infidels and atheists. He often told us that so strong was his sense of the dangers to which the souls of men were exposed by the heresies and loose views of God’s Word which abounded, that should none of the ministers of the Free Church separate from these mad men, he would feel himself bound to keep worship with his own family privately every Lord’s Day, and have no connection with them as a Church. “I will,” he said, “expose the awful rebellion against God, which goes under the name of religion in this land, to my own family, and keep them from these Churches while they are under my control; and if they will not continue to act according to my advice when they are no longer under my control, the awful sin of forsaking God will be on their own heads.”
In the year 1893 he and four other elders in Glasgow were compelled to separate from the Free Church owing to the drastic and revolutionary changes made in the constitution of that Church by the passing of the Declaratory Act of 1892, and the refusal of that Church, in her Assembly of 1893, to take any steps towards repealing that Act. They felt themselves bound in conscience, according to their ordination vows, “To assert, maintain, and defend . . . the whole doctrine of the Confession of Faith”; but as they realised that they could not any longer perform their vows in connection with that Church, they left her communion in order that they might be able to hold unimpaired the original creed and constitution of the Free Church of Scotland, and were constituted the first Kirk-Session of St. Jude’s Congregation of the Free Presbyterian Church, having the Rev. D. Macfarlane as their interim Moderator. From this position Murdoch Macdonald never resiled in the least degree. On the contrary, his last message to his brethren in office, sent from his death-bed, was: “I have the approval of my conscience on the brink of eternity that the position taken by us in 1893, and the steps used since to maintain it faithfully, were approved of by God; and my last request to you and my fellow-elders is that you should continue to hold the same unimpaired to the day of your death.” The Session received this message with profound reverence, as it came from a God-fearing man in such solemn circumstances, and they pray that they may be enabled, by the grace of God, to act according to this last request of their beloved brother. They desire also to state that they have been all along of the same opinion with Mr. Macdonald about the need of adhering to our position as a Church.
He had a deep insight into and a painful experience of the sinfulness of his own heart and mind. He often complained bitterly to us of the corruption, darkness, hardness, worldliness, and unbelief which he felt within. This corruption became more grievous to him from year to year, and during the last two years he repeatedly spoke to us of his fear that he was never truly changed, owing to the trouble his inward corruption caused him. This kept him often at the throne of grace, praying to the Father who sees in secret and who will reward openly.
On Communion Friday evenings, while speaking to the question, his remarks were always sober, grave, and well suited to encourage grace and to undermine formalism. We never heard him on such occasions without feeling a stronger oneness subsisting between his mind and ours. The same thing was true of many in St. Jude’s Congregation. He never sat down without warning the people of the dangers to which they were exposed from men who cast doubts upon the absolute veracity of the Bible, and from Churches which retained such men in their communion and service; and from the awful desecration of the Lord’s Day by travelling, working, buying, and selling, but especially by the unscriptural teaching and modes of worship resorted to in the Churches. He often said that the blood of this generation would be found on the last day in the skirts of the profane, light, and treacherous ministers who led the people in all the vanities of the godless world, but that that would not excuse the people who followed them.
Some years ago he became missionary to our people at Clydebank, and to his last breath they lay very heavily upon his mind. He had really laboured for the salvation of their souls. In June of last year, on his way to the Prayer Meeting there, he fell heavily on the street, broke a bone in his arm, and was otherwise badly shaken. From the effects of this fall he never fully recovered.
For several years past he went, for two or three weeks each year, to enjoy a rest and change of air with his former brother-elder in this Congregation, Mr. Murdo Murray, Laig. These visits to the north he enjoyed very much, while they were as much enjoyed by his friends there. He went last year as usual in August, at the time of their Communion in that Congregation; and the morning he had to leave for home he went out to his secret devotions as on other days, and after coming in he told Mrs. Murray that that was the last time he would be there. The parting between them that morning was like the parting of Paul with the elders of Ephesus—”they were to see his face no more.”
Last November, on our Fast Day, he complained that he was feeling very unwell, but he was out at the three services. On Friday he came out to the service at eleven a.m., and we advised him to call on his doctor on the way home. He did so, and was told that he was in for jaundice. He took it at once as the messenger that was sent to call him to eternity. He got somewhat better on two or three occasions during the winter, and we all rejoiced that he was to get over the trouble, but he always held that it was the end. Near the end of January he asked us to read to him the thirty-first chapter of Jeremiah, and told us that the words in the third verse (stated above) were the words that he got at first, and that they had been given him now anew. He was in a very solemn and happy state of mind that day. On Tuesday, the 9th of February, we called, and as we were going to read he showed signs of anxiety to say something. We at last caught the words: “I am wearying to get away.” On Thursday he got more strength, and he asked the family to sing part of Psalm cxviii.—the part was from the seventeenth verse onwards. A neighbour who was in at the time saw his face beaming with joy, while, by the motion of his lips, it was apparent that he was joining inwardly in the singing. This very happy expression continued on his face even after he was dead.
Thus passed away, on the 12th day of February, our beloved friend, Murdoch Macdonald. We are sad and left more desolate; but we have no doubt the change was a happy one for him.
We desire to express our deep sympathy with his widow and children, and we commend them to the Father to the fatherless and the widow’s Judge.
N. C.