WE regret that, owing to other pressing duties, we were not able to write this notice earlier.
Angus Macphail was born in the island of Jura, Argyleshire, in the year 1826. As to how he lived in the world till he was about twenty years, all we can say is that he, like the rest of Adam’s ruined posterity, “walked according to the course of this world.” Shortly after the Disruption of 1843, the Free Church sent the eminently godly Donald Macfarlane as a Missionary to Jura. We concluded from the great reverence and very high esteem which Angus Macphail manifested towards the memory of Mr. Macfarlane, that it was through his efforts to preach God’s truth to his fellow-sinners that Angus was awakened to a sense of his lost and ruined condition, and to a knowledge of Christ Jesus as the Saviour.
His partner in life, who predeceased him several years, was a very meek and modest woman. She never became a member in full communion, but we have no hesitation in stating that we believed her to have been truly a God-fearing woman. On her deathbed she opened her mind to us, which caused us to believe that she was a woman with whom the Holy Ghost had saving dealings, and we were convinced that her foundation was that of the Apostles and Prophets—Jesus Christ.
Angus Macphail spent a long period of his life in Lealt, Jura, where he acted as shepherd. In this place all the family were born. He took pains to have his family well instructed in the doctrines of grace as these are so eminently set forth in the Shorter Catechism. He said repeatedly to his family after the Sabbath evening exercise was over and questions asked, answered, and explained: “Any one who knows the Shorter Catechism is not ignorant of the Scriptures.” In this way, though living in an isolated place and far from the outward means of grace, these godly parents brought up their family in the fear and admonition of the Lord.
They came to reside in Glasgow along with their two sons and daughter in the year 1895. Not long after coming to St. Jude’s, he came before the session and was received as a member in full communion in the congregation. The reason why he did not seek admission in the Free Church was that, like many others, he was so grieved with the departures of the Church from her original position as to the inspiration and infallibility of the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments, and the doctrines of the Westminster Confession of Faith and the Larger and Shorter Catechisms. He often told us the great relief his conscience received by the separation of the F.P. Church in 1893 from the so-called Free Church. To this position he held firmly to the end.
Not many years after Angus became a member there was an election of office-bearers in St. Jude’s Congregation, and he was duly elected by a majority of the members to the eldership. After seriously considering the matter he accepted the office. The Mission connected with St. Jude’s Congregation at Clydebank had to be supplied each Sabbath-day by our elders, and he with commendable heartiness took his own turn of this duty. Some of our people there told us that they were much edified by the simple and direct way in which he set the doctrines of God’s word before them.
During the last three years of his life he was unable to walk to the Church, but such was his respect to the Sabbath-day that he would not travel to it by the cars. He was a true lover of the Sabbath. An instance of his great regard for the sanctity of the Sabbath-day became manifest towards his end. His son and his wife came up from Greenock, where they reside, on a Saturday to pay him a visit. He was under the impression that it was the Sabbath, and when they came in to his bedroom, he wept sorely because, as he thought, they had travelled by train on the Lord’s day.
He suffered very little or no pain to the last. His memory became somewhat confused, and his hearing was much impaired, but he knew most of the friends quite distinctly when they called to see him. The last time we called, a few days before the end came, he, as he used to do at other times, asked his daughter to get the Bible so that we would read a chapter and pray. He died on the first Sabbath of May having lived ninety years in a world full of sorrows. His devoted sons went with his remains, and laid what was mortal of him to rest beside the remains of his wife in Ardrossa churchyard on the following Thursday. “But go thy way till the end be: for thou shalt rest, and stand in thy lot at the end of days” (Daniel xii. 13).
We desire to express our sincere sympathy with each member of his family in their time of sorrow. N. C.