(Continued from page 391.)
TO a certain degree it may be said that the Society failed of its highest aim, to wit, to have the honour of sending one or more missionaries directly from the Society into the Foreign Field. In an address which the Society issued in 1802, it becomes evident how near this aim lay to the heart of the members. “Hitherto,” say they, in this address, “our Society has had little in its power. We have, however, been much encouraged by the liberal subscriptions of the religious public of the North of Scotland, and by the correspondence, and assurances of counsel and co-operation of the Missionary Societies of longer standing and experience in the South of our Island.” Then after saying that they had not as yet fixed on any particular field of operation although they felt much drawn towards India and the West Indies, they intimate “that if qualified persons felt inclined towards work in either of these spheres, the Society would be most happy to set them apart for the work of Christ.” At the same time they laid great emphasis on “the importance of employing none but persons who possess a Missionary spirit.” They therefore resolved “to employ in the work of Missions such only as give satisfactory evidence of genuine piety, pure zeal for the glory of God, and fervent love for the souls of men, connected with a solidity of judgment, firmness of mind, clear views of Scripture doctrine, and a sincere disposition to spend and be spent in propagating the Gospel among infidel or heathen nations.” Yet no acceptable person seems to have been stirred up to offer himself at the time.
In 1830 the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland shewed themselves to have come to the mind which the Synod of Moray stood for as far back, as we saw, as 1796, and ordered that a collection should be made throughout their borders on behalf of Foreign Missions. About this time Dr. Alexander Duff was appointed Assembly’s Missionary to India. Seven years afterwards Rev. John MacDonald—son of Dr. MacDonald, Ferintosh—after a short ministry in London went forth as in a sense Dr. Duff’s colleague in India. Now Rev. John MacDonald always looked on himself as the child of the Northern Missionary Society, and in that relation the Society always looked on Mr. MacDonald. When the Society met in June of 1837 in Inverness we are told that the Society “learned with much satisfaction that the Rev. John MacDonald, of London, had dedicated himself to Foreign Mission work, by engaging to proceed to British India under the direction of the General Assembly’s Committee for Foreign Missions, especially as it was the wish and prayer of the founders of the Northern Missionary Society that individuals might be raised up in this district of the country to labour in extending the Redeemer’s kingdom in the great heathen wilderness.” They expressed “their anxious prayer that the great Head of the Church might long spare his life and make him eminently useful in the arduous and difficult service he had so devotedly undertaken, and they recommended to the members of the Society throughout the country to remember him in their prayers at the throne of grace.” When the Society met a year afterwards in Inverness Dr. MacDonald stated that “he had the gratification of hearing from his son that he had commenced his labours as Missionary in Calcutta and that he felt increasing pleasure in the prospect, if such were the will of God, of spending and being spent in the Mission work.” The meeting resolved “to record the great gratification afforded them by this statement and their hope that by the divine goodness they might be favoured from time to time with accounts of the progress and success of Mr. MacDonald’s labours in Calcutta.” Rev. John MacDonald was one of the most saintly and devoted of Missionaries that India ever had, but his course was brief. “In 1847,” writes Dr. Kennedy in his The Apostle of the North, “while Dr. MacDonald was on one of his preaching tours in Perthshire, and just before entering the pulpit in Glenlyon, a letter is put into his hand. Intent on his work, he put the letter unopened into his pocket. Next day, as he was travelling to Edinburgh, he recollected the letter, and on opening it read the tidings of his son’s death. A few groans from a father’s wounded heart, and a few tears from a fond father’s eyes, and the Christian triumphed over the man, and with his heart he said, ‘It is well.’ On reaching home he preached from these words in his own pulpit. ‘It is well,’ he said, referring to his beloved John, ‘that he was born; it is well that he was educated; it is far better that he was born again; it is well that he was licensed to preach the gospel, it is well that he was ordained as a pastor; it is well that he went to India; and above all it is well for him that he died; for thus, though away from us, and absent from the body, he has secured the gain of being for ever with the Lord.'”
As early as 1810 Dr. Alexander Stewart of Dingwall suggested the propriety of the Society employing native missionaries in India. The result was that, after a good deal of deliberation, they, on the recommendation of the Baptist Missionary Society, employed a native of India at a place called Topairly in South India. He was known to the Society as Angus MacIntosh, after Dr. Angus MacIntosh of Tain, and in a minute of the Society as far down as the year 1836 we find him described as “a pious young man of considerable abilities, diligent in his work and desirous of doing good.” The congregation under his charge is described as “having enjoyed a considerable revival at the time.”
It was mainly, however, by way of helping other Societies already in the Mission field that the Northern Missionary Society found its opportunities for doing good. From the beginning of its history, as we saw, it took the liveliest interest in the work carried on by the Edinburgh Missionary Society, or, as it was known after the union of the Edinburgh Society with a similar Society in Glasgow, the Scottish Missionary Society. In the period between 1800 and 1843 the Northern Missionary Society helped the Scottish Missionary Society to the extent of £2,090 sterling. Ere the Edinburgh Missionary Society had yet become the Scottish Missionary Society, we find the following acknowledgment made of obligations to the Northern Missionary Society. “We consider ourselves,” say they, “under the greatest obligations to our much-esteemed brethren of the Northern Missionary Society. The zeal you have discovered for the success of the Gospel commands our esteem. The friendship and confidence you have manifested to us have secured our gratitude and affection. We have long regarded you as our best auxiliary, and we gladly hope that whatever other aid you may judge proper to afford us, we shall continue to enjoy the fellowship of your prayers.” Next to the Scottish Missionary Society, the London Missionary Society, of which, as I have already related, Dr. John Love was the first Secretary, found the greatest support from the Northern Missionary Society. The Northern Missionary Society contributed £1,490, in all, to the schemes of the London Missionary Society. Other Societies, helped by the Northern Missionary Society, were the Moravian Missionary Society, and the Baptist Missionary Society, to the former of which the Northern Missionary Society contributed, in all, £333, and to the latter, in all, £270.
But it was not the heathen alone whom the Northern Missionary Society kept in view. That they contemplated something over and above Missions to the heathen in the ordinary sense, might be guessed from the terms, as already given, in which they first expressed the aims of the Society—the spreading of the Gospel among the heathen and other unenlightened nations. Who may we suppose the other unenlightened nations to be? They were (1) the Jews; and the records of the Society shew the interest taken by the Northern Missionary Society in God’s ancient people in the material help they gave to Societies which had the conversion of the Jews as their aim. Thus, to the “London Society for the conversion of the Jews” the Northern Missionary Society contributed, in all, £90, to the Jewish Mission of the Church of Scotland they contributed the similar sum of £90. (2) The Northern Missionary Society felt the liveliest interest in their fellow Highlanders who had emigrated to one or other of the British Colonies, especially the Canadians of that period. Thus we learn from their records that they contributed £465 to the Glasgow Colonial Society, £45 to the Cape Breton Mission, £20 to Prince Edward’s Island Mission, £16 to the Melbourne Church, Canada, £160 to the Colonial Mission of the Church of Scotland. (3) But in no people did the Northern Missionary Society take a profounder interest than in the Roman Catholics of Ireland. This may be concluded from the extent and variety of their contributions to Irish causes. To the Irish School Society they gave £20, to the London Hibernian Society they gave £1,305, to the Hibernian Sabbath School Society they gave £50, to the Irish Home Mission they gave £17 10s., to the Missionary Association of the Church of Scotland in Limerick they gave £10, to the Synod of Ulster Irish Mission they gave £55, to the Kildare Place Society they gave £20. The sympathy of the Northern Missionary Society with their fellow Celts in Ireland who were under the Papal bondage found early expression. As far back as the year 1806 we find that a letter was read at a meeting of the Northern Missionary Society in Tain from the London Hibernian Society, from which it appears that the London Hibernian Society “rejoiced over the fact that there was a Missionary Society six hundred miles north of London in full active sympathy with them.” The London letter proceeded to say: “That in consequence of the late rebellion in Ireland, which was attended with so much barbarity, the attention of Christians in London was directed to investigate the moral and religious state of the lower orders of Society in that country. It soon appeared that nearly two-thirds of the people were enveloped in the grossest ignorance and superstition, and that there was a lamentable lack of means for ameliorating their circumstances; only a school here and there for teaching the children to read, and hardly any families possessed of a copy of the Scriptures. Thus the mass of the nation were completely under the influence of the emissaries of Rome.” One wonders less at the willing response that Dr. MacDonald, of Ferintosh, gave to the call that came to him in 1827 to do the work of an Evangelist for a brief period in Ireland, when one learns how the Northern Missionary Society, of which, as we saw, Dr. MacDonald was one of the most energetic members, had the state of Ireland so much at heart always.
After 1831 the Northern Missionary Society found it somewhat more difficult to maintain its separate existence, not because the interest in Missions was on the wane in the North, but because, as the reader already knows, the Church of Scotland had in that year, in virtue of its General Assembly, taken up Mission work in earnest. Dr. Duff was very anxious that the Northern Missionary Society should become amalgamated with the General Assembly Committee. The Northern Missionary Society, however, decided to maintain its distinct position, at the same time that it meant to contribute of its funds very freely to the schemes of the Church of Scotland. I have already told the amount contributed by the Northern Missionary Society to Colonial and Jewish Mission Schemes of the Church of Scotland. To the Church of Scotland Indian Mission the Northern Missionary Society contributed £610 in a period of about twelve years, or over £50 annually.
When the Disruption came about in 1843 almost all those who took an interest in the Northern Missionary Society left the Establishment. One does not wonder therefore that at a meeting of the Society in Inverness on the 8th of June, 1843, the following resolutions were passed unanimously: (They are the last records of the Northern Missionary Society)
(1) That this meeting desire to record their thankfulness to God for the measure of countenance afforded to the Society during the forty-three years it has been in operation and the amount of aid it has been enabled to give to other Societies, having for their object the furtherance of the Redeemer’s kingdom, both at home and abroad.
(2) That this meeting are unanimously of opinion that the objects of the Society can henceforward be most efficiently carried out by means of each congregation contributing to the several schemes of the Church, agreeably to the instructions of the ‘Free’ Assembly, or to other missionary objects entitled to Christian support, and therefore resolve that the usual annual meetings shall in future be discontinued.
(3) That this meeting confidently trust that increased exertions will be made by the friends of Missions in this part of the country for the promotion of the Gospel and the hastening of the coming of Messiah’s kingdom over all the earth.
(4) That the thanks of this meeting be tendered to Rev. C. C. MacIntosh, Tain, their able and excellent secretary, for the very efficient manner in which he discharged the duties of that office, as successor to his respected father, the late Dr. MacIntosh, of Tain, who acted as secretary from the commencement of the Society till his death. The meeting was closed with prayer.
(Signed) “J. MACDONALD, Preses.”
The considerations that mainly moved me to give such a lengthy account of this Society were: (1) That from its history as from that of the other Missionary Societies named in these papers, we may learn that whilst it was always the duty of the Reformed Churches to do what they could to send the Gospel to the heathen, nevertheless there was a time fixed by God Himself for this manifestation of missionary activity, and until that time came the thing could not be done, that time being marked in the apocalyptic vision by “the angel flying in mid heaven having the everlasting gospel to preach unto every nation and tribe and people.” (2) That after a comparison of Scripture with Providence we may, without irreverence or falsehood, say that that symbolical angel had some of its feathers from the North of Scotland, and (3) That it would not be well for the present generation to forget those days so full of promise that were of old.
J. R. M.