“THE APOSTLE OF THE NORTH.”
THE following interesting and graphic description of Dr. Macdonald’s preaching is taken from the memoir of the Rev. Duncan Campbell, Kiltearn, a godly and able minister, by the late Rev. Duncan M’Gregor, Dundee. Mr. M’Gregor had a vivid pen, and his portraiture of Dr. Macdonald is perhaps more striking than any other description we have of him:—
A vast crowd assembled to hear the great preacher (at Lawers in Perthshire). I heard him preach four times. First, upon his favourite subject, Justification. His text was Isaiah liv. 17, last clause, “And their righteousness is of me, saith the Lord.” Second, upon the conflict between the old and new man in believers. His text was Romans vii. 14, “For we know that the law is spiritual; but I am carnal, sold under sin.” Third, upon one of Christ’s miracles, I forget which, but I remember his argument. He asserted and maintained that Christ’s miracles proved—(1) His divinity; (2) His divine mission; (3) The truth of His doctrine; and (4) His mercy. At some one of these services, he read Ezek. xxxvii. 1-10 before sermon, and a good old man, a Mr. Campbell, then a merchant in Killin, who sat beside us, whispered to his neighbour, “He’s to be on the work of the Spirit to-day.” It was not so, however. On the Monday, “the last day of the feast,” he preached the most extraordinary sermon I ever heard from him upon Isa. xxxv. 10, “And the ransomed of the Lord shall return, and come to Zion with songs and everlasting joy upon their heads: they shall obtain joy and gladness, and sorrow and sighing shall flee away.” I can remember the portly figure, the long glossy satin vest, the cheery, joyous expression of his eye, as he rose in the tent to begin the service, and scanned the mighty crowd; the eager and breathless expectancy of the people, when the preacher had fairly begun, the masterly analysis of his text, the enunciation of his topics, and how, as the sermon rolled on, the mighty, trumpet-like voice went pealing through the crowd, and the subject stood out in vivid realization before our very eyes and souls. The body of the sermon was one glowing description of the bright ascent of the ransomed. The far-off land seemed very near. “We could almost think we gazed through golden vistas into heaven.” But at the close he made an appeal to the unsaved which was literally overwhelming. After speaking of the need of a ransom, an atonement, a satisfaction by blood, in consequence of man’s deep guilt, and the spirituality and unchangeableness of God’s law, he shewed the impossibility of justification by works, and urged all to accept the glorious righteousness gratuitously offered in the gospel. Then he pointed out the terrible doom of despisers, slowly quoting the words of Heb. x. 26, 27, “There remaineth no more sacrifice for sins, but a certain fearful looking for of judgment and fiery indignation, which shall devour the adversaries”; and suddenly raising his voice, he cried in his very loudest tone “Agus a chnuimh nach básaich ged chagnadh gu siorruidh” (And the undying worm gnawing for ever)! It was as if a flash of lightning had struck the congregation. The effect was indescribable. Hundreds wept as they sang the parting psalm—
“They shall be brought with gladness great,
And mirth on every side,
Into the Palace of the King,
And there they shall abide.”
NOTE FROM APPENDIX.
Dr. Macdonald’s preaching on this occasion realised my conception of Whitfield’s more than any preaching I have ever heard. His sermon was a sacred prose poem. The theme was idealised, so to speak, in his mind and heart and soul: he enjoyed the special assistance of the Holy Spirit: his words flowed like a stream of fire. And the power of music was superadded. He sang his sermon, and his voice at its full swell was equal to a whole orchestra of singers. How that magnificent chaunt thrilled the audience! They say that Ralph Erskine sang his sermons. The tradition still lingers in Dunfermline.
His voice was of course the first thing that struck a stranger hearing him for the first time. I have never heard a preacher’s voice—any voice—of such compass, richness, and power. It could sweep through two octaves. If I may be pardoned for using technical language, it could sweep the scale easily from C below the treble staff, to G, or even B flat, above it. It was a most wonderful instrument. I have been told that on a Communion Sabbath, if the weather was fine, when he preached in the Burn of Ferintosh, it could easily be heard at Dingwall, and many words, and even sentences, could be distinguished at his own house, a thousand yards off.
I heard him preach at Killin the following day, to an intensely responsive audience, from Isa. lv. 2, “Eat ye that which is good.” He assisted his son-in-law at the Communion in Glenlyon in 1839. It was the 24th of August. He concluded the open-air services with an address from 1 Kings xviii. 21, “How long halt ye between two opinions?”—which was accompanied by the power of the Holy Ghost. The arrows of the King of Zion were sharp in the hearts of His enemies. It was a day of espousals. Many made haste and came down, and received Jesus joyfully.
In July 1842 he assisted at the Sacrament in Blair-Athole. His subject was Gal. iii. 12 (1st clause), “And the law is not of faith.” It was a profound and masterly exposition of the doctrine that the way of salvation by the law is not the same as the way of salvation by faith; that the two are essentially different; that while the law says Do and live, the gospel says, Live and do; that in the one case you work for life, in the other you work from life. A good deal of the sermon was perhaps beyond the capacities of the audience, but the application was overwhelmingly solemn. He first drew a broad line of demarcation between those who had found salvation by faith, and those who were seeking it by the works of the law. He then divided the unconverted into classes—”according to their tribes,” “according to their families,” “by households,” “man by man.” Josh. vii. 14. He spoke of the several paths by which they go down to the chambers of death—ignorance, enmity, self-righteousness, unbelief, worldliness, thoughtlessness, sloth, sleep, procrastination, sinful habits—and then cried, “Bithidh scread ghoirt an ifrinn an lorg sin” (There will be a bitter cry in hell in consequence)! It was the hammer striking the rock. How every face in the vast crowd turned pale!
I have heard old people speak of his sermon upon Ruth, i. 16, “Entreat me not to leave thee,” &c., preached in 1817, in the Hogs’ Park at Milton, Lawers, on the Monday of the Communion. They described it as perhaps the most powerful and affecting sermon he ever preached. “The fervid eloquence, and the pathetic appeals near its conclusion seemed to move and to constrain even the most careless. Many were deeply affected and agitated both in mind and body.”—(Memoir of Findlater, p. 196.) One man who was present told me that the weeping towards the end reminded him of the bleating when lambs are being weaned—loud, general—as if the whole hillside were bleating! I do not in the least doubt it. At the same time, having heard him often, and had abundant opportunities of judging, I believe the sermon he delivered that day at Blair-Athole, in point of profound theological knowledge, argumentative power, luminous illustration of some of the most difficult heads in divinity, and close, inevitable application to the conscience of the hearer, was among the most remarkable he ever preached.
He assisted regularly in the Gaelic Church, Edinburgh, for many years. Here are some of his texts—”We have found the Messiah, which is, being interpreted, the Christ,” John i. 41; “Who can understand his errors? Cleanse thou me from secret faults,” Ps. xix. 12; “The Lord Thy God in the midst of thee is mighty, He will save thee,” &c., Zeph. iii. 17; “By His knowledge shall my righteous servant justify many,” &c., Isa. liii. 11; “Neither give place to the devil,” Eph. iv. 27; “The full soul loatheth an honeycomb, but to the hungry soul every bitter thing is sweet,” Prov. xvi. 7; “And if the tree fall toward the south, or toward the north, in the place where the tree falleth there it shall be,” Eccl. xi. 3; “No man can come to me, except the Father which hath sent me draw him. . . . Every man, therefore, that hath heard and learned of the Father, cometh unto me,” John vi. 44, 45; “As the Father knoweth me, even so know I the Father, and I lay down my life for the sheep,” John x. 15 ; “I am that bread of life,” John vi. 48 ; The parable of the wheat and tares, Mat. xiii. 24-30 ; “While we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen,” &c., 2 Cor. iv. 18. On one occasion, after the Disruption, when the prospects of the Free Church were dark, and fears were entertained that no adequate provision could be made for her ministers, he made his hearers smile by reading for his text, 1 Kings xvii. 14, “For thus saith the Lord God of Israel, The barrel of meal shall not waste, neither shall the cruse of oil fail, until the day that the Lord sendeth rain upon the earth.” Fragments of these sermons, like particles of gold dust, still lie in my memory.
It is unnecessary to attempt a characterization of his preaching, as this has been done by Dr. Kennedy of Dingwall in his memoir of him. It was doctrinal rather than experimental. He felt that the greatest thing in the presentation of Christ, the setting forth of the matchless glory of His person, and love, and death. He fixed his eye on the grand objective facts of the gospel. He directed the eyes of his hearers to them. For every one look at himself and his mental states he gave ten at Christ. This was the secret of his unfailing cheerfulness. He was like Charles of Bala: it was a good sermon to see him. “The joy of the Lord was his strength.” He knew and understood well “that tragedy of the Christian life”—the struggle with indwelling sin. He had been under the penumbra of doubt. But he was always bright and sunny—had a smile and a kind word for every one—threw himself into his work with hopeful and joyous alacrity—and never complained of fatigue when he did the work of two.
His taste was beautifully severe. He was exceedingly chary of using anything for purposes of illustration in preaching, except what lay within the four corners of the Bible. His illustrations were exquisite, but they were almost invariably Biblical. One who did so much evangelistic work, who preached all over Scotland, who met and personally dealt with so many anxious inquirers, must have had a great store of materials that men of less fastidious taste would feel warranted in using in the pulpit to illustrate such points as conviction of sin, repentance, saving faith, and the like. He scarcely ever drew upon it. But when he told an anecdote, it was never forgotten. On a Communion Sabbath evening, about the year 1841, he preached in the Gaelic Church, Edinburgh. He had been in Skye shortly before, and had seen “a noise and a shaking among the dry bones.” A young woman had been awakened, and had sobbed aloud. The service was concluded, the benediction was pronounced, but she followed him weeping bitterly. Like Evangelist, when he found Christian weeping outside the walls of the City of Destruction, he turned and asked her, “Wherefore dost thou cry?” “Oh,” she said, “Tha firinnean Dhè a tolladh mo chridhe” (God’s truths are piercing my heart through and through !)”
The last time I saw him at Dunoon in October, 1848. He preached there on a Tuesday evening, from Rom. iv. 5, “But to him that worketh not, but believeth on him that justifieth the ungodly, his faith is counted for righteousness.” Jehovah Tsidkenu—Justification by faith—was his theme to the last! Like Whitfield, he would say, “O the righteousness of Christ! The righteousness of Christ! Excuse me if I speak of it in every sermon!” Next day he preached twice at Kilmun, in English, from 1 Thess. i. 4, “Knowing, brethren beloved, your election of God;” in Gaelic, from Ps. cxix. 105, “Thy word is a lamp unto my feet, and a light unto my path.” Curious, when crossing with him in the steamer, I noticed that his boots were tight. In a few days I heard that a tight boot had hurt his foot, and that the wound festered. It was the beginning of the end. His last text was Ecc. ix. 10, “Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might; for there is no work, nor device, nor knowledge, nor wisdom, in the grave whither thou goest.” On the 16th April, 1849, he fell asleep.