TRANSLATION OF PSALMS INTO KAFIR METRE.
THE following letter, dated Ugie, 5th April, 1913, has been received by the Rev. John R. Mackay, M.A., Inverness, from the Rev. J. Knox Bokwe:—
“MY DEAR MR. MACKAY,—Let me thank you for your last letter, with £16, of which £7 10s. was duly paid to Mr. William Kobe, Ntsikana. In acknowledging receipt, he wrote to say he was feeling better, and hoped to continue the work of translating once again. True to this promise, a packet has come to-day for me to revise up to Psalm 115, so that any time the Lovedale printers are ready to set the Psalms into type, they have copy enough for beginning. Should there be delay, it is not on our part, as I said before.
With every regard and thanks,—Yours faithfully,
J. KNOX BOKWE.”
CHURCH BUILDINGS AT BEMBESI.
Rev. Neil Cameron, Convener of Foreign Mission Committee, has received the following note from the Rev. John B. Radasi, Missionary:—
“C/O NATIVE COMMISSIONER, BEMBESI,
MATABELELAND, SOUTH AFRICA, 9th April, 1913.
MY DEAR MR. CAMERON,—This is to inform you that Mr. M’Keurtan got the plan and specifications of the church to be built at Ngwenya, Bembesi, all right, and he has already started building the church. He thinks that it will be finished about the end of April. The bricks will do for a brick-lined building to be put inside of the corrugated iron. The stones, too, that we dug are suitable for the foundation. I am glad to hear that our people in Scotland are not forgetting us in their prayers. We need the prayers of the Lord’s people. Pray for us that the Lord may pour down His Spirit upon us, and that sinners might be brought to the knowledge of the truth, as it is in Christ Jesus.
I must now close, with kindest regards to you.—Yours faithfully,
J. B. RADASI.”
The late Mr. Duncan Crawford, Elder, Oban.
MR. DUNCAN CRAWFORD was born in Glasgow sixty years ago. His father’s name was Donald Crawford, a brother of the eminent Archy Crawford, Tighnabruaich. Not long after he was born his parents left Glasgow and went to reside in Greenock. His mother died when he was nine years, so that he very early lost the one who loves with a sincerity which is unsurpassed among men. He lived quite careless and unconcerned about his soul until he was about eighteen years of age. At that time Archy Crawford, his uncle, came to reside at Greenock, and both Duncan and his sister went to live with him. This was a marvellous providence, as it was during his residence with his uncle, and by the Lord’s blessing on the instruction he then received, that he was convinced of his lost condition as a sinner before God. This man of God was used by the Lord in his day in turning as many sinners to righteousness as any other layman of his contemporaries in Scotland. It was a cause of thankfulness to Duncan Crawford all his after days that the Lord in His inscrutable providence so ordered matters as that he went to live with his uncle at this critical period of a young man’s life. The double bond—of his being so nearly related to him, and of his becoming his spiritual father in the Lord—caused union between the two which continued to grow more intense during their sojourn under the sun. They now enjoy the love of Christ together, which the one so tenderly commended to the other in this world. There were many points of resemblance between them, and two more loveable men of God we have not had the privilege of being acquainted with in recent times.
As Duncan Crawford was of a very modest disposition, he spoke very sparingly of his own experiences, and consequently we are not able to write much about the manner in which the Lord led him out of darkness into His marvellous light. The fact, however, was so manifest that all who knew him had to confess that he was a man in whom the grace of God shone forth very conspicuously.
The firm of plumbers with whom he served his apprenticeship in Greenock had a branch at Oban, and soon after he learned his trade, they sent him there to take full charge of it. In a few years they gave up business, and he continued, on his own behalf, the Oban part of it. He gained the full confidence of all who knew him as a man of real integrity and conscientiousness in all his transactions. He gave this advice to his sons before he was taken away: “Do honest work; and remember that you will not do any work on the Lord’s day. If you will have to do any work of necessity on that day, such as stopping a burst pipe or turning off the water, etc., remember that you won’t charge anything for such work.”
After he came to Oban he attended the Free Church there. About that time there was a vacancy in the congregation, and the ministers and probationers sent to officiate were so unsatisfactory one after another that the effect on his mind was a suspicion of the ministry in general. Dr. Kennedy of Dingwall passed through Oban at that time on his way to assist at the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper at Greenock. Mr. Crawford heard that he went there and made up his mind to go also. The effect was, to quote his own words:—”I went to Greenock and heard Dr. Kennedy, and as another said, ‘whether in the body or out of the body I cannot tell.’ From that day the gospel ministry was lifted for me out of the mud, and remained ever since what it ought to be in every christian man’s estimation.”
He observed with much pain the growth of infidelity or rationalism, the departure from the doctrines of the Confession of Faith, the innovations in the form of worship, and the high-handed manner in which discipline was made impossible in the Free Church. Few men had a better understanding of the real meaning and intention of the infamous Declaratory Act and its framers. He watched the movements and statements of men throughout the controversy which culminated in the separation of 1893. On account of his keen discernment of men and their motives, the private judgment which he formed of how they would act had seldom to be changed. Notwithstanding, he was so judicious that none except his confidential friends could find out his opinion till men revealed by their actions what their real motives were.
In 1893 he took an active part in the formation of our congregation at Oban, and continued to do his very utmost to advance all the interests of that congregation to the end. How he watched over the young, the fatherly interest he had in their welfare, both spiritually and temporally, the joy he manifested at seeing or hearing any signs of repentance in any of them, and the grief with which he saw or heard of any sinful practices indulged in by any of them were very noticeable to his friends. Indeed, the young of Oban have lost two of their truest friends on earth in Mr. Crawford and Mr. Angus Macdougall. The wrestling of these two men at a throne of grace for the young of Oban we can never forget.
As a public speaker he was conspicuously able. In speaking on passages of the Word of God, he was as acceptable to the Lord’s people as any they heard. In his own opinion he was nothing, and often remonstrated with us for asking him to conduct services at all. His utterances on every occasion revealed a deep insight into the subject in hand, a logical mind, the most choice terms, and very good delivery. He was always listened to with wrapt attention, whether he spoke to a congregation or in the courts of our Church. At the fellowship meeting held on Friday night before the Communion, he spoke with much light and feeling. It was at these meetings that we got more of his private experiences than on any other occasion. The last time we heard him, in speaking of man’s inability to believe of himself, he said: “I could well understand that a poor guilty and self-destroyed sinner might see in Christ crucified, as set forth in the gospel, all that he needed in order to be saved from wrath and death on account of sin, and that, at the same time, he was quite conscious of the fact that, unless God gave him faith to appropriate Christ as his own Saviour, he would never be able to believe.” At the same meeting he said: “I was personally much comforted by remarks which fell from the lips of one of the ministers assisting at our last Communion. The words were that faith of adherence was as sure to bring one to heaven as the assurance of faith, though not so comfortable nor desirable.” These two statements drew the veil aside so far as to let us have a glimpse of the experiences of the man within.
The brotherly love and condescension which he always manifested toward his fellow office-bearers in the Oban congregation was all that could be desired. The tribute they drew up and inserted in the Session records after his death bore ample testimony to their warm regards toward him, their deep sense of the loss sustained by them as a Session, by the congregation of Oban, and by the whole Church, as well as by his widow and family.
His last illness was not long, but he endured much pain. His mind was constantly occupied with the things of eternity, and he expressed his intense desire to praise God for His goodness to him. One day shortly before he died he sat up in bed and said to his family, who were about him, “Why are you keeping me? Let me away to the Lord.” He also said: “What would become of me if I had neglected salvation till I came to a death-bed? for my mind is occupied now with my bodily suffering.” He added: “After I am gone they will say kind things about me; but I don’t care for these things; for I am only a poor sinner, but yet a saved sinner.”
His remains were laid to rest in Pennifuir Cemetery, Oban, on Saturday the 10th day of February, 1912. A very large number of people attended the funeral from diverse places north and south, as well as the most of the people of Oban. Shops were closed and blinds drawn along the route to the cemetery. It was to be observed that almost every one felt that a great man had fallen that day in Israel.
May the Lord raise up the sons instead of the father, and may He be a Father of the fatherless and a Judge of the widow.
N. C.
The Canadian Mission.—Rev. John R. Mackay, M.A., Inverness, left for Canada on 17th May with a view to do the work of a deputy this summer to our Canadian Mission. He expects first to be some weeks in June in Winnipeg, Manitoba. (See address of Hall on Magazine cover). Then he proceeds to Ontario to preach to the groups there. Mr. Malcolm Gillies, student, who has accompanied Mr. Mackay, will take up permanent duty as preacher in Winnipeg for a year.