LANGWELL HOUSE, DINGWALL.
TWO members of the Dingwall congregation were removed by death in the course of the past year—Miss Mackay and Miss Urquhart. The former died in August and the latter in September. They were two of the most worthy Christian women we had in our congregation. Intimate friends on earth, they are now, we have no doubt, together in heaven.
Miss Urquhart was brought under the saving power of the Gospel at the age of seventeen years, and she led a consistent and useful Christian life to the end of her pilgrimage in the wilderness. Her parents, who were godly persons, lived for the first part of their married life at Conon, in the parish of Urquhart, but removed to Dingwall soon after Dr. Kennedy was settled as minister of the Free Church congregation in the town, and they remained at Dingwall till they finished their course in the world. The conversion of Miss Urquhart at an early age may be traced to her godly upbringing from childhood by her parents and the preaching of the Gospel by Dr. Kennedy. She had the greatest love and esteem for Dr. Kennedy, and remembered and often repeated much of what she heard from his lips when preaching. She was greatly impressed by a sermon he preached at Ferintosh on the sovereignty of God in the salvation of sinners—a subject to which he gave a prominent place in his preaching during his ministry, and the more so as he saw Arminianism making such progress in the Church since it was introduced into Scotland by the American missionaries, Moody and Sankey.
Miss Urquhart bore the impress of the class of Christians taught and nourished under the ministry of such great ministers as Dr. Kennedy—a class that are rapidly passing away. She was reserved in speaking of her own experience till near her end, when she spoke more freely of what the Lord did for her soul, and expressed her good hope for eternity. It would do good to one to visit her on her deathbed. Christ was all in all to her. She had no confidence in the flesh; all her hope was in the finished work of Christ. This must be the case with all God’s people, for it is all-sufficient.
Miss Urquhart was among the few in Dingwall who stood faithful to the truth in 1893, when the creed of the Church of Christ in Scotland since the Reformation was thrown overboard by a large majority in the Free Church, and an Arminian creed adopted instead. She adhered steadfastly to the position then taken up by the Free Presbyterian Church, believing that it was the only position which God would own and bless, as it was agreeable to His will revealed in the Scriptures, and that He would not likely bless the labours of those who remained under an unscriptural creed. It was the opinion of discerning persons that the cream of the professing people in Dingwall joined our Church. It was a time of trial and sifting, and the sifting is still going on, but it is meant by Him who has the fan in hand to separate the chaff from the wheat, which is no loss to the Church but gain.
Although they were for ten years without an ordained minister, she, among the rest, regularly attended the meetings which were conducted on Sabbath and week-days by the godly catechist, Mr. Alexander Macdonald, and after his death by a student or missionary; for it was not ministers she followed, but the truth. It is due to her memory to mention that during those years, when they had neither manse nor church, her house was a home for our ministers and other friends on Communion occasions, and not only on those occasions, but every time they came to preach in the town. Her comfortable and hospitable house might at that time be called the Free Presbyterian manse in this town.
She was charitable to the poor, especially those of the household of faith, and gave of her means to help them in the time of need. When she did so her left hand did not know what her right hand gave. Being of independent means, she acted as one who had to give an account of the talents given her by her Lord. She gave also of her means to support the cause of Christ at home and abroad. After her decease her kind and generous brother, Mr. George Urquhart, handed to our Treasurer £20 for congregational purposes, “in memory of a beloved sister, who took a deep interest in the Dingwall Free Presbyterian congregation.”
Miss Urquhart saw many changes in Dingwall since her first recollection of the town. Many of the Lord’s people she knew had passed away. The Sabbath, which was carefully observed by old and young in her earlier days, she saw profaned in various ways by a new generation who feared not the Lord. There was not such a thing as selling and buying milk on the Lord’s day when she came to Dingwall, but she saw this evil work carried on in defiance of the divine command to remember the Sabbath to keep it holy, and professors of religion, even ministers, elders, and communicants patronising it. She saw also a time when there were only two ecclesiastical denominations in the town—the Established Church and the Free Church—but she lived to see six denominations instead of the two. She saw the once large Free Church congregation, under the pastorate of Dr. Kennedy, split into three different denominations. This she deplored. She deplored it on account of that which caused the division—the changing of the Scriptural creed of the Free Church. She saw, moreover, an organ introduced into the Parish Church—the first organ seen in a Presbyterian Church in Dingwall since the Reformation. Although the Established Church was not thought much of as a witness for Christ since the Disruption in 1843; yet this was in Dingwall a new departure from the mode of worship practised in the Church of the Reformation. Seeing all this she felt thankful that she was a member of a Church (and a faithful member she was) that adhered faithfully to the principles, doctrines, and mode of worship prescribed in the Word of God.
Having been well grounded in the doctrines of God’s word by her parents and under the ministry of Dr. Kennedy, Miss Urquhart was sound in the faith, and would not listen to error. She appreciated the preaching of the gospel, and even the law when it was given its appropriate place in the sermon. A minister could not declare the terrors of the law too severely for her, though as a living Christian who needed feeding, she preferred to hear the gospel preached. She found benefit from both, and she knew that the great majority of the hearers were dead in trespasses and sins, and needed to be awakened to a sense of their lost condition. Indeed, she did not care for a minister who did not preach the whole counsel of God. The more faithful a minister was, the more attached she was to him. She knew her Bible well, and read with interest and profit other religious books, especially biographies of godly men and women—some of whom she knew, and others she never saw in the flesh. She loved the Lord, His word, people, and cause, and in her walk and conversation bore the marks of a true Christian woman. Being the eldest of a family of two sons and four daughters (one of the sons died when young), she, after the death of her parents, acted like a mother towards the rest, and they looked up to her for advice and guidance as long as she was left with them. There was great concord between them all.
In her last illness, which lasted for several months, Miss Urquhart was for the most part confined to bed, and suffered severe pain in her side and foot, which she bore with Christian resignation to the Lord’s will. She was taken ill suddenly, and understood that it was the messenger of death; and although her relatives hoped that she might recover, she herself did not expect so. At the beginning of her trouble she was wonderfully comforted by passages of Scripture, and spoke freely of the Lord’s goodness to her. She was not, however, a stranger to the power of unbelief in her past history, nor now on her deathbed. But she was enabled to look to Jesus, in whom she trusted in the past, and hoped that He would not now forsake her at the end. She was not disappointed in her hope. The night she died she asked the nurse to tell her brother and sisters not to retire to bed, not knowing what might happen before the morning. The nurse went to deliver the message, and when she returned after a few minutes she found that Miss Urquhart had passed away. Yes, she had passed away to her eternal rest. All her sufferings came to an end, and she entered into the joy of her Lord. “Blessed are the dead that die in the Lord.” She died on the 12th September, 1913, and her remains were interred in the Old Churchyard in the town on the following Monday.
She is survived by a brother and three sisters, to whom we extend our deep sympathy and prayers in their bereavement and sorrow. We shall all die; let us therefore seek preparation for death. Let us seek grace to live for God while we live, and then we shall, after death, be with Christ, which is far better. D. MACF.