OUR readers would have learned with sorrow, by the June Magazine, of the death of Mr. Malcolm Kennedy. The deceased was so long and so favourably known to the Church of God in many parts of the north of Scotland, that we feel we owe to his worthy memory a brief obituary notice. The exact date of his birth we are unable to give, but his own account was that he was born in the year preceding the Rev. Lachlan Mackenzie’s death, an event which took place at Lochcarron in the year 1819. Malcolm would thus have been born in the year 1818, and at the time of his death had attained to the ripe age of ninety-one years. His birthplace was Kishorn, Lochcarron. He was only a boy at school when, from all that we could learn from him or about him, we conclude that he became, through the distinguishing grace of God, a disciple of the Lord Jesus. Although he knew much and distressing mental affliction, he was altogether, physically, a very healthy man; and our impression is that—in the humble capacity chiefly of a day labourer—he most honourably conducted himself towards all and sundry during a long lifetime.
Malcolm was a man who shone most of all in private life and conversation. His love to the Church of God was tender, extensive, and unaffected. We may be permitted to remark that, having been privileged to see him less than a fortnight before the end, nothing struck us more than the manner in which the beauty of his love to the brethren shone. His allusions to some of them were altogether characterised with such a savour of the love of God that we could not but remark afterwards that we might have known from the abundance of the Spirit of love which was upon him that his end was near. Love to the Word and love to the Lord’s people made him, during many a year, take long journeys in order to be present where the gatherings of the people were, and in this way he became known to a very large number of the excellent of the earth, and was everywhere esteemed by them as one of the worthiest. Another grace in which he excelled was private prayer. A quaint remark of his, bringing out this characteristic, occurs to us, and as it gives point to our observations, we may rehearse it. He was a few years since at a Communion in Gairloch, and was lodged with a kind friend, whose house had about it not a few bushes of brushwood, where Malcolm often resorted to secret prayer. He came on the following week to the Inverness Communion, and notwithstanding all that friends could do for him there, Malcolm felt that there was a freedom in the solitude of the country that could not be had along with privacy in the town. A friend, passing over one of our suspension bridges in his company on a fine summer evening, remarked how beautiful the situation was. “Ah,” said he, “‘se bha briagh pris Ghairloch” (’twas the Gairloch bushes were bonny).
But while it is the case that Malcolm most of all shone in private, he was a man whose exercises in public many found edifying and interesting. His acquaintance with the Scriptures was very wide and exact. He had the privilege of listening to most of the ablest preachers of the north of Scotland in his time, and his mental endowments and heart interest in the doctrines of grace were such that he profited much, and he could himself, in consequence, give expression to his views of truth with exactness and discrimination. Perhaps he owed more in this respect to the Rev. Alexander MacColl, of Lochalsh, than he did to any other human instrument. He conducted at one time a Sabbath School in Kishorn, and although the last few years of his life were spent in his son’s house in Inverness, his interest in all that pertained to the well-being, and especially to the spiritual well-being, of his native place, was strong, and indeed one would say, unabated to his last breath. He was, of course, mostly known to the congregations which he visited as a speaker to the question at our fellowship meetings on the Communion Fridays, and as a wrestler in prayer at the public prayer meetings. His exercises oftentimes in this way were refreshing to the Lord’s people; and his evident interest in the eternal well-being of his fellow-sinners, as well as his regard for the glory of God, showed itself in such a way that he would be a hardened sinner indeed who did not feel drawn to him.
He filled for many years the office of elder, and possibly in that capacity nothing struck his fellow-office-bearers more than his zeal to maintain a proper discipline in the Church of Christ. That, we believe, was at the root of his decision in 1893, when, leaving the society of many with whom he had before then gone peaceably to the House of God, he concluded it his duty to cast in his lot with those who showed themselves prepared to suffer the loss of much rather than that the purity of doctrine, worship, and discipline, with which, through the kindness of the Head of the Church, the Free Church of Scotland had been long beautified, should become a thing of the past.
During, however, the history of the Free Presbyterian Church, Malcolm’s health was considerably affected. On this account he, some years since, came to Inverness, and spent the remaining part of his life with his only son, Donald Kennedy. At his son’s house he peaceably finished his course here below on Friday, 30th April. His remains were, according to his oft-expressed wish, conveyed on the following Tuesday to the burying-place in Kishorn. “The memory of the just is blessed.” J. R. M.
We regret stating, by mistake, this date as 7th May in our last issue.—ED.
Correction.
At the end of poetry entitled “The Rising of the Romish Church in Britain,” the initials should have been “F. B.,” not “J. B.”