BY THE REV. D. BEATON, WICK.
(Continued from page 147.)
LADY BOYD.
LADY BOYD was the only child of Sir Thomas Hamilton of Priestfield, who afterwards became Earl of Haddington. Her first husband was Lord Lindsay of Byres, afterwards Earl of Crawford-Lindsay. Her second husband was Lord Boyd, a cousin of Rev. Robert Boyd of Trochrig. Lady Boyd cast in her lot with the Presbyterians, and was on terms of friendship with such eminent ministers as Robert Bruce, Robert Boyd, Robert Blair, Samuel Rutherford, and John Livingstone. Her interest in the principles of Presbyterianism was strengthened by a deep piety and love to the cause of truth; and it was shown in the efforts she made to have the gospel proclaimed. As it had been the custom of like-minded ministers to meet together for prayer to ask for God’s blessing upon themselves and to implore His favour for the desolate condition of the Church of Scotland, Lady Boyd gave every encouragement to them. It was also her custom, if unable to be present at the appointed place of meeting, to set apart the day in humiliation and prayer. Anderson gives a letter in his Ladies of the Covenant, written by Lady Boyd to Rev. Robert Boyd of Trochrig in connection with such a matter. “Right Honourable Sir,” she writes, “Seeing it hath pleased God, my husband,—my lord is content that I bring the bairns to the country, I thought good to advertise you of it, that you may do me the great pleasure as to come and bring your wife with you on Thursday, for I would fain have good company that day, since I have great need of help, being of myself very unable to spend that day as I ought. Now, seeing it hath pleased God to move your heart to take care of my soul and to be very comfortable to me, being he to whom only I have opened my secret griefs, and of whom I must crave counsel in those things which my other friends cannot, and shall not, know. It is common to God’s children and the wicked to be under crosses, but crosses chase God’s children to Him. O that anything would chase me to my God. But, alas! that which chases others to God, by the strength of sin it holds me further from God; for I am seeking for comfort in outward things, and the Lord will not let me find it there. When I should pray or read God’s Word, or hear it preached or read, then my mind is possessed with thoughts how to eschew temporal grief, or how to get temporal contentment. But, alas! this doing is a building up of mountains betwixt my soul and the sense of God’s presence, which only ministers contentment to a soul; and by thus doing I deserve to be plunged in endless and infinite grief. Now, Sir, I will not trouble you longer with this discourse. Hoping to see you shortly, I rest your loving sister in Christ, CHRISTIAN HAMILTON.”
Another interesting letter from her ladyship was written to Mr. Boyd when he got into trouble through attending similar meetings at the house of Rev. Robert Bruce. The letter is as follows:— “Right Honourable Sir,—I hear there is some appearance of your trouble, by reason the King’s Majesty is displeased with you for your being with Mr. Robert Bruce. Since I heard of these unpleasant news I have had a great desire to see you, for whatsoever is a grief to you is also grievous to me; for since it pleased God to bring me to acquaintance with you, your good advice and pious instructions have oft-times refreshed my very soul; and now, if I be separated from you, so as not to have occasion to pour out my griefs unto you, and receive counsel and comfort from you, truly I wot not what to do. And as I regret my own particular loss, much more may I regret the great loss our Kirk sustains, and is threatened with. But as for you, if the Lord should honour you and set you to suffer for His name, I trust in His mercy He shall strengthen you, and make His power perfect in your weakness. The Apostles rejoiced that they were counted worthy to suffer for the name of Christ, and the Apostle says, ‘Unto you it is given in the behalf of Christ, not only to believe on him, but also to suffer for his sake.’ Now, if ye be called to this honour, I pray God give you this grace, that ye may account it your honour, for if ye suffer with Christ ye shall also reign with Him. I trust in the mercy of God that all things shall work together for the best to you. If it might please our God, who is merciful, to continue you in your ministry, I humbly crave it; but if He will glorify Himself in your suffering, His good will be done. Ye will lose nothing here, and what ye lose, it will be recompensed a hundred-fold. The loss will be ours, who are left as sheep without a shepherd, ready to wander and be devoured of wolves. Now, if I have a wandering soul, the Lord in mercy pity me! For I am afraid of making defection if the bread of life be not continued with me. In sincerity, it will not be philosophy nor eloquence will draw me from the broad way of perdition, unless a voice be lifted up like a trumpet to tell me my sin. The Lord give us the spirit of wisdom, even that wisdom that will prove wise in the end, when the wise men of this world will be calling upon the hills and the mountains! O Lord, give us grace to provide our oil here, that we may enter in with the Bridegroom, and be made partakers of His riches and joy, when they that have embraced the world and denied Christ shall have their portion with the devil! Sir, I will not trouble you further at this time. If you have leisure I would be glad to see you, or at any other time, and to hear from you. So remembering my duty to your wife, and commending you and her and the children to God, I rest your most affectionate sister at power, CHRISTIAN HAMILTON.”
These are noble specimens of Christian epistolary correspondence, and the letters breathe the spirit of those women who helped the Apostle in the Gospel. It was something in those days of darkness to have ladies occupying a high place in the social scale, encouraging the servants of Christ to be faithful unto death. The same spirit of deep piety breathes in another letter, given by Wodrow in his Life of Robert Boyd. “My husband,” she writes, “has written for me to come to your feast, but in truth it were better for me to be called to a fast. I believe the Lord of Hosts is calling to weeping and fasting and sackcloth. I pray you, Sir, remember me in your prayers to God, that He may supply to me the want of your counsels and comforts, and all other wants to me; and that at this time, and at all other times, He would give me grace to set His majesty before me, that I may walk as in His sight, and study to approve myself to Him. Now, Sir, I entreat you, when you have leisure write to me, and advertise me how ye and yours are, and likewise stir me up to seek the Lord. Show me how I shall direct to you, for I must crave leave to trouble you at some times. Now, I pray God to recompense ten thousand-fold your kindness to me, with the daily increase of all saving grace here and endless glory hereafter. Remember me to Mr. Zachary; desire him to come and bear my lord company awhile after ye are settled. I entreat, when you come back again to Glasgow, that you may come here, for I think I have not taken my leave of you yet. Till then and ever, I rest your loving sister in Christ to my power, CHRISTIAN HAMILTON.”
When Samuel Rutherford was sent north to Aberdeen she maintained a correspondence with him, and according to his own testimony, “she ministered to him in his bonds.” Quite a number of his letters are addressed to Lady Boyd. In one of these letters Rutherford pours out his soul in longing desire for the return of Christ to Scotland:—”Oh that the nobles would go on, in the strength and courage of the Lord, to bring our lawful King Jesus home again! I am persuaded that He shall return again in glory to this land; but happy were they, who would help to convey Him to His sanctuary, and set Him again up upon that mercy-seat, betwixt the cherubim. O sun, return to darkened Britain! O fairest among all the sons of men, O most excellent One, come home again! Come home, and win the praises and blessings of the mourners in Zion, the prisoners of hope, that wait for Thee! I know that He can also triumph in suffering, and weep and reign, and die and triumph, and remain in prison and yet subdue His enemies; but how happy were I to see the coronation-day of Christ, to see His mother who bare Him, put the crown upon His head again, and cry with shouting, till the earth should ring, ‘Let Jesus our King, live and reign for evermore!'” In another letter he says:—”I cannot but thank your ladyship for your letter that hath refreshed my soul. I think myself many ways obliged to your ladyship for your love to my afflicted brother, now embarked with me in that same cause. His Lord hath been pleased to put him on truth’s side. I hope that your ladyship will befriend him with your counsel and countenance in that country, where he is a stranger. And your ladyship needeth not fear by your kindness to His own will be put up into Christ’s accounts.”
That Lady Boyd was a deeply exercised Christian is evident from many expressions in Samuel Rutherford’s letters to her. It is to this feature of her character to which he refers in one of his letters written from St. Andrews in 1640:—”I wish you to be builded more and more upon the stone laid in Zion, and then ye shall be the more fit to have a hand in rebuilding our Lord’s fallen tabernacle in this land; in which ye shall find great peace when ye come to grips with death, the king of terrors.”
It was in the autumn of this year that Lady Boyd was called upon to pass through a severe and trying bereavement in the death of three of her brothers and others of her relatives. This melancholy accident happened through the blowing up of a magazine of gunpowder at the Castle of Dunglass. Besides her brothers, three or fourscore gentlemen are said to have perished. Rutherford wrote a letter full of tender sympathy and wise Christian counsel to the bereaved lady. Soon after this she lost her only son, Lord Boyd. The young nobleman’s life was of fair promise. “I am glad to hear that you,” says Rutherford in a letter to him, “in the morning of your short day, mind Christ, and that you love the honour of His crown and kingdom. I beseech your lordship to begin now to frame your love, and to cast it in no mould but one, that it may be for Christ only; for whom your love is now in the framing and making, it will take best with Christ. If any other get a grip of it, when it is green and young, Christ will be an unco and strange world to you. Promise the lodging of your soul first away to Christ, and stand by your first covenant, and keep to Jesus that He may find you honest.”
Lady Boyd had the enviable consolation of knowing that her children—to use Samuel Rutherford’s words—were “honoured to build up Sion’s waste places.” Her daughter, Christian, who was married to Sir William Scot of Harden, endured suffering for attending field-conventicles in the reign of Charles II. Another daughter, the wife of Sir William Scot of Ardross, showed deep sympathy with the Covenenting cause. It was to Lady Ardross that Rutherford wrote when Lady Boyd died. She had been staying at the house of her daughter when the last summons came. On her death-bed she was frequently visited by Rev. Robert Traill, who has left a brief account of her last days in his Diary. “It hath seemed good, as I hear,” says Rutherford, “to Him that hath appointed the bounds of the number of our months, to gather in a sheaf of ripe corn, in the death of your Christian mother, into His garner. It is the more evident that winter is near when apples, without the violence of wind, fall of their own accord off the tree. She is now above the winter, with a little change of place—not of a Saviour; only she enjoyeth Him now without messages, and in His own immediate presence, from whom she heard by letters and messengers before. I grant that death is to her a very new thing; but heaven was prepared of old. And Christ as enjoyed in His highest throne, and as loaded with glory, and incomparably exalted above men and angels, having such a circle of glorified harpers and musicians above compassing the throne with a song, is to her a new thing, but so new as the first summer rose, or the first fruits of that heavenly field, or as a new paradise to a traveller broken and worn out of breath with the sad occurrences of a long and dirty way.” So passed hence this noble lady with a higher claim to such a title than that which came to her from the blood that ran in her veins. The members of the Parliament which met at St. Andrew’s in 1646 paid their last token of respect to her by attending her funeral. Lady Boyd is one of the most distinguished in fidelity and piety of the noble band of ladies of high degree who were not ashamed of the cause of Christ when it was despised in Scotland, and as such she has well earned her right to be reckoned among the heroines of the faith in Scotland.
LADY COLVILL.
LADY COLVILL, whose maiden name was Margaret Wemyss, was the wife of the second Lord Colvill of Ochiltree. Her husband died in 1671. She early showed her sympathy with the Covenanters by attending conventicles. No course could be more hateful in the eyes of those in power, and Lady Colvill soon became a marked person. Her residence being in Kinross-shire, she frequently attended the preaching of the outed ministers in the county, and entertained them at her house. Among this goodly company there were such honoured names as John Welsh, Gabriel Semple, and Thomas Hog. Anderson’s account of how she first came under the persecuting attention of the authorities is brief and to the point, and may be quoted here. “A party of soldiers,” he says, “had been sent to disperse a field conventicle, held in the Lomonds of Fife. They met with no resistance from the people; but Sharp, to excite the Council to greater violence, falsely alleged that the people had made resistance. This fabricated story being communicated to the Court, a letter came from the King to the Council, dated 23rd June, 1674, requiring the Council to bring the ringleaders of that disorder to punishment, and promising to send for their assistance some forces from England and Ireland. This letter occasioned a bitter persecution against all in Fife—both men and women—who attended conventicles. A long catalogue of names, including several ladies as well as gentlemen and a number of the common people, was sent over to the agents of the Government in Fife, who were required to summon them to appear before the Privy Council at Edinburgh. Lady Colvill’s name was in the list; and she, with several other ladies and gentlemen, were summoned to appear before the Lords of the Privy Council on the 9th of July. The charges for which they were summoned to answer, were their keeping and being present at house and field conventicles, at Dunfermline, Cleish, Orval, and other places; their inviting and countenancing outed ministers in their invasion and intrusion upon the kirks and pulpits of Forgan, Balmarinoch, Collessie, Monzie, and Auchtermuchty, and hearing them preach and pray therein; and their harbouring, resetting and entertaining Mr. John Welsh, a declared and proclaimed traitor, in their houses and elsewhere.” Lady Colvill paid no attention to the summons, with the result that she with the others who refused to attend were denounced as rebels and put to the horn at the market crosses of Cupar and Forfar. A meeting of the Privy Council was held at Cupar on the 15th of September of the same year, and Lady Colvill was again summoned to appear before them. She refused to appear, but was ordered to pay a certain fine before the 1st of November.
Not satisfied with this the Council issued letters of intercommuning against her and upwards of a hundred others. This sentence was a very serious one, for any one who should harbour, entertain or converse with the intercommuned person was regarded as equally guilty. These letters were proclaimed in Cupar at the beginning of October, 1675, and instructed all sheriffs, stewards, bailies of regalities and bailiaries, their deputies, and magistrates of burghs “to apprehend and commit to prison any of the persons above written, our rebels, whom you shall find within your respective jurisdictions, according to justice, as you shall answer to us thereupon.” Wodrow truly remarks: “Perhaps it was every way without a parallel, that so many ladies and gentlewomen married, should be put in such circumstances; but this was to strike the greater terror on their husbands and other gentlewomen.” Lady Colvill lay under this sentence until 1679, when all letters of intercommuning were suspended.
Her zeal for the Covenanting cause did not cease when the cruel hand of oppression was raised against it; it rather seemed to grow. In 1677 the persecution raged so hotly that no conventicles or meetings for public worship could be held by the outed ministers during the day, and in the time of Zion’s distress and sorrow her house was thrown open to the Covenanter ministers. On one occasion a conventicle had been held at her residence, intelligence of which having reached the ears of Captain William Carstairs, the commander of the troops, a raid was made on the house in the early hours of Monday morning. The minister who had been officiating on the Sabbath was apprehended, with William Sethrum, the chamberlain, and the raiders “broke Robert Steedman’s head, who made his escape; and when the Captain missed him, he fell into a fit of the convulsion, and continued two or three hours in it.” While the Captain was in the fit Lady Colvill and her son made their escape. From the close attention paid to her house by this persecutor she had to betake herself to the mountains and fields.
Lady Colvill was particularly anxious that her only son should be trained up in those great truths for which the Covenants at that date were so zealously contending. But the government of the day, as the children of this world, were wise in their generation, and were determined if possible to instil other principles into the minds of the young. They set about the matter with a thoroughness that was worthy of a better cause. First of all, the teachers in the universities held their appointments on condition that they acknowledged the form of Episcopacy then established in Scotland. Schoolmasters were also expected to make a like acknowledgment, but the government went further. It decreed that the children of persons of rank who were favourable to Presbyterian principles should be taken from them and educated in principles which those parents detested. Lady Colvill was determined, if she could help it, that her son would never come under such training, so for the time being she removed him out of the way. Her action kindled the fury of the government into a flame. They took steps to punish her severely; she was first fined 5,000 merks Scots (£277 6s. 6d.), and failing to pay this sum she was imprisoned. The following account of the cause of her imprisonment by Lord Fountainhall is of interest:—”December 2, 1684. The Lady Colvill is imprisoned in Edinburgh Tolbooth, by the Privy Council, for her irregularities, and particularly for breeding up her son, the Lord Colvill, in fanaticism and other disloyal principles, and abstracting and putting him out of the way, when the Council was going to commit his education to others; for which we have Acts of Parliament as to the children of Papists, which may be extended a parilate to others.”
The sufferings which the Covenants had to endure when hunted by the dragoons were trying enough, but imprisonment in some of the loathsome dens that were used as prisons was an experience of which we can have but the very faintest conception. Lady Colvill’s prison was no exception to others, of which such harrowing accounts have come down to us from those days of cruelty. There was no fire in the cell even in the depth of winter. In the MS., “Grievances from Scotland, 1661-1688,” there is the following brief reference to Lady Colvill’s experiences in prison: “My Lady Colvill was put in the Tolbooth of Edinburgh, in a straight, dark, fireless room, where all day long she behoved to keep candles burning; and was thus kept for a long time because she would not deliver up her son, my Lord Colvill. Their quarrel with her was her not countenancing the profane clergy.” Such hardships, followed as they were by those she had already endured, told seriously on her health, so she made application to the Privy Council to be removed to a more suitable room in the prison. The Council, “having considered her petition, gave order and warrant to the magistrates of Edinburgh and keepers of the Tolbooth thereof to accommodate her with a more convenient room than that which she is now in, and to detain her prisoner therein till further order.” But the “more convenient room” did not help to bring back the health she lost in enduring such privations, and her life being in danger, she again petitioned the Privy Council. On the 17th March they “gave order and warrant to the magistrates of Edinburgh to set her at liberty, upon her finding sufficient caution, under penalty of the fine for which she is incarcerated, and to confine herself to a chamber in Edinburgh, and to re-enter the said prison upon the second of April next.”
In the spring of 1685, the Council “gave order for setting at liberty any women prisoners for receipt or harbouring of rebels, or on account of their wicked principles, upon them swearing the abjuration of the late traitorous paper, and likewise giving their oath that they shall not hereafter reset, harbour or keep intelligence with rebels and fugitives.” This Act had in view more particularly the Cameronians, and as Lady Colvill did not belong to them she was by no ways benefited by it. On the other hand the Council soon gave evidence that, as far as Lady Colvill was concerned, they were determined to put her to more trouble, for at a meeting, held on 16th April, the Council “grant warrant to his Majesty’s Advocate, to raise a process before the Council, against the Lord Colvill and his mother for disorders;” they also “grant warrant to the clerks of Council to receive caution from the Lady Colvill for her re-entering prison within the Tolbooth of Edinburgh when called, under the penalty of five thousand merks.” On the 21st April she appears before the Council and is granted a further period of liberty. Nine days thereafter the Council “gave order to Patrick Graham, captain of the town of Edinburgh company, to apprehend her, and to see her re-entered prisoner within the Tolbooth of Edinburgh.” This is the last notice of Lady Colvill that the Privy Council Records contain.
When it is borne in mind that her health was now shattered, her constancy in enduring tribulation for the persecuted cause is all the more noble. In none of her petitions to the Privy Council does she give the slightest hint that she wished liberty or comfort at the expense of renouncing her allegiance to the Covenanted cause in Scotland; that were too great a price in this noble lady’s eyes to pay for any temporary enjoyment she might gain thereby in this world. Her steadfastness and unswerving loyalty to a persecuted cause found in her a splendid illustration of the Royalist poet’s lines:—
“For loyalty is still the same;
Whether it win or lose the game.
True as the dial to the sun,
Although it be not shone upon.”
(To be Continued.)
Memoirs or Spiritual Exercises of Katherine Colace or Mrs. Ross.
THE RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE OF A SCHOOLMISTRESS OF THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY.
(Written with her own Hand.)
(Continued from page 28.)
SOME GENERAL REMARKS LEFT UNDER THE SAID MRS. ROSS’S OWN HAND.
IN every thing that we are in doubt of, whether of greater or smaller consequence, whether temporal or spiritual, we are to be determined of the Lord, by enquiring of Him, and living in duties uncontroverted in themselves. We ought to enquire about the season, seeing affirmative precepts do not bind at all times. “In all your ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct your paths.” This is a duty, both acceptable to God, and of unspeakable advantage to ourselves, and likewise indispensibly necessary to the tender walk of a Christian. 1. That it is acceptable to God appears from His command, In all our ways acknowledge Him. 2. That it is profitable for us; consider (1) It keeps us in the exercise of self-denial. (2) It keeps the will in subjection to the will of God. (3) It gives us many errands to God; it keeps the heart watchful and tender. (4) It affords us peace when we meet with difficulties to know that we are in God’s way. (5) It affords us confidence to look to Him for through-bearing when we have not followed our own way, but His. (6) These who observe this duty with any measure of exactness seldom want light; they have a promise for it: He shall direct their paths. (7) It is an excellent help against backsliding. That it is indispensable to the tender walk of a Christian appears. For 1. Such a duty, sincerely gone about, is accompanied with the awe and authority of God upon the spirit, which they dare not meddle with, fearing to offend Him. 2. These whom the Lord intends to keep tender win not away either with the omission of enquiring of the Lord, or not peremptorily observing what direction is given when enquiry is made. 3. The Lord is not wanting in encouraging the conscientious observing of this command. Objection: But what shall be done in case of great difficulty in following the case foresaid? Answer: (1) Sometimes in very difficult duties the Lord, to discover their sincerity to themselves for their comfort, inclines and makes them willing to that which He will never put them to the performance of, as in Abraham’s case, and even in other inferior cases. (2) The Lord may put out some to a duty that is not presently to be performed, to prepare and warn for it, and so that question ought to be enquired into—Is this the season for such and such a duty? (3) There be difficulties met with, both in that which He would have not done, and in that which He would have done presently. And in that case ’tis usual for those whom the Lord thus frames to enquire again, and either the difficulty evanisheth or the heart is strengthened to go through. The Lord, out of His tender compassion to me and to keep my soul in life, hath frequently and sharply chastised me when this was omitted, and continues still so to do, by which I observe that in this day, when the workers of iniquity are proceeding from evil to worse and yet prosper, that the Lord discovers to His people that sin is as hateful to Him as ever; and in His due time He will make it known to this atheistical generation by the judgment He executes, who will not now know, neither will they understand. I find there are some that win not away with their faults, and the more straight and tender any be, the less escaping, because ’tis for the want of purity in principle and practice that the Lord is pleading with His people at this day, for He will either have a people to His mind or none at all. Sin is as hateful to the Lord now as ever, though He suffer His enemies to go away unpunished.
There was a time when the Lord set His people to work, by giving them many encouragements; but now He is training them to go about duty from another principle than either success or assistance, and that is—because He hath commanded them so to do, and obedience pleaseth Him. Now, to be acted from such a principle evidenceth a greater measure of grace than the former; this is a walking by faith, and not by sense.
Again, I observe that there is this day (August, 1679) no visible appearance of God in this land, saving His countenancing His dying witnesses, and supporting of His concerned people, very few as they are. This is the bush burning, and not consumed, the Lord being in it; and this support is attained by being much in secret, the Lord taking His people off from all other helps but Himself, by making them see an end of all perfection. We have gone a-whoring from Him after other things, therefore our ways must be hedged in. And these that are not so dealt with are in a worse condition: it is a sad plague to prosper in an evil course.
Some sad symptoms of a sad desertion and ensuing judgments.
- Frequent deaths of the most serious. 2. Universal formality, without life and power, yet little concernedness for the want of them. 3. Great security both as to folk’s spiritual and temporal condition, though never less cause. 4. For a considerable time we have heard of no young converts. 5. The Lord suffering mire and dirt to be cast upon the faces of the most serious, by allowing ministers to misinterpret the reproachful providences that the Lord hath been pleased to measure out to His people for their sin, trial, and humiliation, and the stumbling of, or hardening others. This speaks great desertion, ushering in great wrath.
But judgment shall return to righteousness, and all the upright in heart shall follow after it. When they are for ensigns on the mountains, and beacons on the hills, then shall He wait to be gracious, etc. “Yet, behold, there shall be left a remnant that shall be brought forth, both sons and daughters; behold they shall come forth unto you, and ye shall see their ways and their doings, and ye shall be comforted concerning the evil that I have brought upon Jerusalem, even concerning all that I have brought upon it, and they shall comfort you when ye shall see your ways and your doings, and ye shall know that I have not done without cause all that I have done in it, saith the Lord God.” (Ezek. xiv. 22-23.) No good by preaching, no good by sad providences, no good by the testimony of His dying witnesses, presage utter desolations; all means being now ineffectual, and this not being laid to heart, nor any being convinced of particular guilt, but each blaming another, biting and devouring one another. There is a fearful process laid against Scotland, which he that runs may read. Be astonished, O heavens, etc. Hath a nation changed their gods, who are yet no gods? But we have changed our glory into that which hath not profited. O Scotland, exalted to the heavens above other nations, how art thou thrown down! etc. Thy prophets have seen a vain and a foolish thing for thee, and causes of banishment. Let God arise, and let His enemies be scattered. Even He who trode the wine-press alone, etc., who is this day as much as ever staining the pride of all glory; let Him take unto Him His great power and reign, since our case is past remedy from any hand but His own. All our essays for helping prove rather in appearance marring. Enemies’ attempts are all successful; this is humbling and trying to faith.
That which is mainly to be seen of God this day is his long-suffering towards His enemies, and His power in supporting His afflicted people under the great pressures of these times, and some sparks of His holiness in His appearing against a professing people that did not walk with Him, and in putting others in the furnace, and keeping them in it, to conform them to His image of holiness. Yet a remnant shall be saved; and sometimes we would be guessing who they will be, but now we are so bemisted by some providence that we must change our marks. And in this the goodness and wisdom of God appear, either for preventing or curing our security, and in putting us to diligence to be found in the way of certain safety.
All that’s come upon us hath not yet humbled us, witness our not being delivered. For (1) His Word faileth not. “If my people which are called by my name shall humble themselves and pray, etc., then the Lord will hear from heaven, and forgive their sin, and heal their land.” (2 Chron. vii. 14.) 2. Witness our defections, for the proud He knoweth afar off. (Psalm cxxxviii. 3.) 3. Our little growth in grace; for He gives grace to the humble. (Isa. iv. 6.) 4. Our contentions; for only of pride cometh contention. There is a contending for the truth which is lawful and necessary; but the wrath of man worketh not the righteousness of God. 5. Our darkness; for the meek will He teach His way. (Psalm xxv. 9.) 6. Our reproachful providences; for He will exalt the humble. 7. Our want of reformation is a cause for which the Lord contends with us; true humiliation is ever accompanied with heart-reformation. (Prov. xxviii. 13.) 8. A wearying of the yoke of Christ, and so casting it off, calling Him a hard Master; whereas those that are truly humble think any thing on this side of hell pure mercy. (Lam. iii. 22.) 9. Witness the desire of esteem, and to be greatest—an evil, if not repented of, would have debarred the disciples from heaven. (Matt. xviii. 3.) 10. Resenting of injuries. Singularity proves a tentation to pride, which, if not adverted to, doth provoke God to leave such to singular grounds of humiliation, and that without respect of persons, it being not only horrid ingratitude, but a robbing of God of that which He will not dispense with to any creature. (Isa. xlvi. 11.) This sin of pride is seldom cured but by being left either to some grievous sin or some terrible affliction, or both. (Isa. xxxix. 2, compared with v. 6-7.) These things I remark from some things that fell out in June, 1680.
The next month I had occasion to observe these things: 1. The holiness of God is engaged to witness against sin impartially. (Rom. ii. 9.) Tribulation and anguish must be against them that do evil, especially against them that profess Him. (Amos iii. 2.) “You have I known,” etc. And the nearer Him the more jealous is He in His appearance against them, when their public acts tend to His dishonour. (Lev. x. 12.) 2. How terrible is the Lord making the sin of pride to appear this day, if we will not wilfully shut our eyes! It being a walking contrary to Him, He is engaged by His threatening to walk contrary to such. (Lev. xxvi. 27-28.) 3. Untenderness of the offence of any whom we judge on good grounds to be the Lord’s, is a sin that the Lord will not suffer to go unpunished, it being contrary to so express a command, See that you offend not one of these little ones (Matt. xviii. 6) with threatening of terrible hazard. 4. The warnings of these that have been known to have the mind of the Lord should not be slighted, for this may prove a rejecting of the counsel of the Lord against ourselves. (Luke vii. 30.) 5. ‘Tis a most dangerous evil, in the justifying of ourselves, to take away the righteousness of another from him because he is not of our persuasion, that they may have the more influence, though such dare not meddle with them for fear of offending God. 6. It is a great indignity done to the Spirit of God when there is not an universal respect to the commands of God, but that which we think is for our ends is observed, and others are slighted to the grieving of the Spirit (whereas the Lord has given us some precepts for the regulating us in our obedience to other precepts). And in this His wisdom, goodness, and authority is despised, there being one Law-giver. 7. I find Satan hath great advantage by some folks abusing of truths, to cause others slight them. 8. I observe that temptations and stumblings from others will be no excuse for our falling, since we have so clear light and warning against being offended. 9. I see a snare in countenancing of others in that which we durst not practice ourselves; faithful warning when one hath light (though it be not taken off our hands) gives much when matters fall out as they expected. 10. The great trouble of any affliction is the having a sinful hand in bringing it on. 11. It is hard to go on in a matter of consequence without being fully determined in our own minds, though others were never so clear in it. 12. The Lord even in mercy, as a wise physician, cuts off a profitable member to prevent a gangrene’s destroying the whole body, though it should be smarting to the whole body. ‘Tis presupposed that the member cut off is infected, and that the Lord may be just when He judges, and pure when He speaks, this could not be wanted, for there was no restraining of some courses quite contrary to the Word of God. 13. I observe that the sufferings of the Lord’s people in this day are rather for punishment of sin than trial. 14. The Lord, in His admirable condescendency to me, when He was about to bring evil either on the land, a place, or a person that I was concerned in, He first discovered to me such evils in these that nothing could cure but the very way He took, though, in warning, He suffered me to try my hand to the utmost for the preventing it, that therein I might have peace. Many instances of this nature I might give. And now the conclusion is, That ruined this generation must be, for there is no recovering of them without the pouring out of His Spirit; yet it is ever meet, in the most desperate case, to leave a latitude to Sovereignty, but otherwise there is no hope.
(To be Continued.)
The late Mrs. Macdonald of Shieldaig and Inverness.
WE regret to record this month the death of Mrs. Macdonald, widow of the late highly esteemed Rev. Donald Macdonald, Free Presbyterian minister of Shieldaig, Lochcarron, which event took place at Broadstone Cottage, Inverness, on Tuesday the 17th August. Mrs. Macdonald had been in very delicate health for a considerable time, and gradually grew weaker and weaker until she passed peacefully away on the date mentioned. The deceased lady was a devoted helpmeet to her worthy husband, who valued her as one of the Lord’s best gifts to him. At the time of the crisis in the years 1893-94, when Mr. Macdonald took his stand, along with the Rev. D. Macfarlane, for the doctrines and principles of God’s Word as embodied in the standards of the Free Church of 1843, and formed what is now known as the Free Presbyterian Church of Scotland, Mrs. Macdonald cordially supported her husband in his testimony for the truth. They were evicted from church and manse at Shieldaig in 1894 by the then authorities in the Free Church, but Mrs. Macdonald, as well as her husband, cheerfully underwent the trial, and was never heard to express any regret at the sacrifice then made. After Mr. Macdonald’s death in 1901, she removed to Inverness, and continued to the end an attached friend of the Free Presbyterian Church. Mrs. Macdonald was intelligent in mind and gentle and refined in disposition, and was much respected by all who knew her. She bore her last illness in a spirit of patience and submission to the will of the Lord, and gave evidence of having “the root of the matter” in her. To her pastor (Rev. J. R. Mackay) she made mention of passages of Scripture which came to her and supported her in her sufferings. We trust that now, by divine grace, she has rejoined her eminently godly husband, though in an altered relationship, in the “many mansions” which the Lord Jesus said He would prepare for His people. Her remains were interred in the Applecross burying-ground beside those of Mr. Macdonald. Much sympathy is felt for her widowed sister, Mrs. Alexander Fraser, who is in infirm health, in the great bereavement she has sustained.
Letters of the late John Macleod, ST. JUDE’S, GLASGOW.
5 SHORT STREET, DUNEDIN,
NEW ZEALAND, 4th December, 1905.
MY DEAR BROTHER,—I received your most welcome letter some time ago, and was unable to answer it sooner, as you would have learned from M.’s letter, by the last ‘Frisco mail, that I was laid up. I was laid up ever since until a day or two ago, when I began to get up a while through the day; but I feel so weak that I can hardly write. I had a very severe pain in the back and both sides, and especially in the region of the stomach. I was for a few days that I could take nothing at all but milk, and of course this reduced me very much. The doctor expressed his fear at first that it might be an extension of the disease from the lung to the stomach, but now he thinks it was a disorder of the stomach itself. However, I had a severe trial of it, both in body and mind, but I should thank the Lord, in whose hands is the breath of all living, that He has had mercy upon me. It would be our wisdom to see that it is of the Lord’s mercies that we are not consumed, because His compassions fail not. It would be our wisdom to seek Him while there is health and strength, for a time of bodily trouble is not a time to begin to seek the Lord.
As I have told you in a few words of my trouble, and as I am now getting a little over it, I may tell you that I have made up my mind to go home, if I get as much strength as would do me to undertake such a long journey, in the beginning of summer, that is, leaving here about the end of March or beginning of April. It appears to me that this place is not going to do me good, and there is no use staying here; but if I don’t get stronger than I am now, I need not speak about it, but I should do as the Psalmist did.
“I to the hills will lift mine eyes,
From whence doth come mine aid.
My safety cometh from the Lord,
Who heaven and earth hath made.”
Now, I would like you to answer this letter as soon as you can. I got C.’s letter last week; I will answer it soon. Remember me kindly to all friends. . . . —I am, your affectionate Brother,
JOHN MACLEOD.
5 SHORT STREET, DUNEDIN,
NEW ZEALAND, 25th December, 1905.
MY DEAR S—, —I have had your welcome letter some days ago, and was glad to see by it that you were all well. I am able to get up every day, but it is very little strength I gain. My appetite is not at all good, and of course that keeps me down. We have wet weather here again, as usual. I never saw a place in my life so wet as Dunedin in the summer time; it is almost raining all summer. The weather is very changeable; one day hot, and another cold, so this is the kind of climate we have here. . . . Murdo M’Kenzie had the news of his brother’s death by the last ‘Frisco mail.
There is no news from here of much interest . . . We had a visit lately from Miss Jessie M’Lauchlan, the great Scottish singer, and all Dunedin went out to hear her. Mr. M’Lennan, the parson of the Gaelic congregation, went to hear her, and she went to hear him. This is the way they mixed it. When the sons of God saw the daughters of men that they were fair, they took to themselves wives, and so they mixed the Church with the world and the world with the Church; and so on until the flood came and swept away all these ungodly men. I am afraid that this will be the end of the Churches here, that they will be swept away in the awful flood of the wrath of God for their wickedness.
It may appear to us a wonderful expression, “the sons of God, and the daughters of men.” The sons of God were the sons of Seth, and the sons of Seth were the Church of God; but the daughters of men were the daughters of Cain, and Cain was “of that wicked one.” Now, when the seed of Cain saw that they could not get into the Church of God by any pretence, they showed their daughters to the sons of God (the Church), and when the sons of God saw the daughters of men that they were fair, they took to themselves wives—took them into the Church. You know what time of day it was with the sons of God when these monsters got in to defile the Church, and they succeeded so far to defile the Church as to be beyond remedy. The only thing for them then was to be destroyed from the face of the earth. This is what the Churches are busy doing now, filling the Church with the world, and so sure as they are doing it so sure is it that they are bringing the awful flood of the wrath of God upon themselves.
Now, I must close. You will please remember me to all friends in St. Jude’s. . . . I hope the Lord will give strength to undertake the passage home. With love to all the rest. Grace be with you all.—Your affectionate Brother, JOHN MACLEOD.