BY THE REV. D. BEATON, WICK.
(Continued from vol. xxiii., page 375.)
VI.—REV. DONALD SAGE, RESOLIS.
DONALD SAGE was born at the Manse of Kildonan, 20th October, 1789, and was the son of the Rev. Alexander Sage, minister of Kildonan. His grandfather was the famous Rev. Aeneas Sage, a sketch of whose ministerial career has already appeared in this series.
The subject of this sketch was a man of intense feeling, and the events of his life, pathetic and otherwise, made an indelible impression on his sensitive spirit. His earliest recollection was of his mother’s death, and his description of the sad event reveals some of the high literary skill he possessed in describing the feelings of individuals, and the scenes of which he was a witness. “I was then,” he says, in referring to the event, “three years, a month and seven days old. I recollect entering in, little knowing or even caring whither I was going, the room where my mother but a few hours before had breathed her last. A bed stood at the north-east corner of the room, near the chimney, its dark curtains folded up in front. On the bed, with a stillness which both surprised and terrified me, lay one whom I at once knew to be my mother. I was sure it was she, for she lay on my father’s bed; but why so still and silent I could not tell. At the opposite corner of the room sat my widowed father. My sudden and heedless entrance seemed to have opened up afresh the floodgates of his grief. I was the favourite child of her who now lay stretched in death before him. It was too much for him. He sobbed aloud; the tears rolled down his cheeks; his whole frame shook; and he clasped me in his large embrace in the agony of a husband’s sorrow. That scene, like a framed picture, retains its place in my memory, detached from everything else.”
At the age of fifteen he began his college career at Aberdeen. In his Memorabilia Domestica, he gives a graphic account of his experiences in the long journey from Kildonan to Aberdeen, and has left interesting biographical sketches of the professors and other notable men of the University city. On the conclusion of his studies he became tutor to Mr. Matheson, laird of Attadale’s family. This meant a transfer from the Presbytery of Dornoch to that of Lochcarron, and in 1815 he was licensed by this Presbytery to preach. His own remark on this important event in his ministerial career is worthy of record: “How ignorant of that Gospel was I then, and how callously indifferent to the great charge with which I was then entrusted!” As a further indication of his unpreparedness for the great work of the ministry, he himself narrates:—”My first attempt to address a public audience was made at Lochalsh, and in the pulpit of Dr. Downie, the parish minister. My exhibition was an almost complete failure. I was wretchedly deficient in the Gaelic language, and I entered upon the ministry with a conscious dependence upon myself. Both the Gaelic and English sermons which I preached at Lochalsh were the result of a whole week’s study, and I had closely committed every word to memory” (Memorabilia Domestica, p. 255). His next attempt was even more humiliating, though it was a thoroughly salutary experience. On the appointment of Rev. David MacKenzie to the parish of Farr, the Royal Bounty Mission at Achness was offered to Mr. Sage, and on his way to his future charge he came to his father’s manse at Kildonan. It was the Communion season in the parish, and Mr. Sage was asked to preach on Sabbath evening, and his experience is best described in his own words:—”I selected for my text the same passage I preached from at Lochcarron. I uttered a few preliminary sentences with considerable boldness and facility. But all at once my memory failed me, and I made a dead pause. My father sat behind me in the tent, and groaned aloud for very anxiety. The congregation, too, among whom were a number of my future flock at Achness, all on the very tiptoe of curiosity and attention on my first appearance, were agitated like the surface of one of their own mountain lochs, when suddenly visited with a hurricane. After a pause of some minutes, however, during which I felt myself pretty similarly circumsstanced as when carried away by the river Carron, I pulled out my manuscript and stammered out the rest of my sermon with much trepidation, and in the best way I could. I returned home totally disconcerted, and seriously meditated the renunciation of my license, my mission, and all my ministerial prospects. Mr. Munro,* however, came to comfort me in my distress. It would appear that he himself had had a personal experience of the very difficulty with which I had then to grapple. He had been requested by Mr. Bethune to preach at Dornoch, but, although he got through the Gaelic service without much difficulty, when he attempted to preach an English sermon without his manuscript, he had to stop short in the middle of a sentence, and was under the necessity of having recourse to his paper, much to his own confusion, no less than to that of his audience. He could thus the more readily sympathise with my feelings, and I was not a little cheered and encouraged by his truly Christian and fatherly admonition. I think, indeed, that upon the whole I was no loser by this very severe trial of my natural feelings. It read me a most humbling lesson respecting myself, and struck a telling blow also at the very root of my self-confidence; then my easily besetting sin” (Ibid. p. 257).
- Rev. John Munro, Dirlot Mission, afterwards minister of Halkirk; he was assisting Rev. Alex. Sage at the above Communion.
The missionaries at Achness were supported out of the Royal Bounty!* The Mission itself covered a wide district, and lay within the bounds of the Presbyteries of Dornoch and Tongue; it extended from the extreme heights of the parish of Farr, from Mudale down to near the middle of Strathnaver, and from Halmadary to Kinbrace. The part of the Mission in Kildonan parish included the townships of Griamachdary, Knockfern, Strathbeg, Gairnsary, Breacachadh, Badanloch, Bad’chlambhain, Ach-na-moine, Ach-na-h’uighe, Dalcharn, Borrobol, and Kinbrace. The townships in the Farr part of the Mission included Mudal, Tobeg, Grumore, Grumbeg, Ceannachyle, Syre, Langdale, Skaill, and Carnachadh. The meeting houses were at Achness and Ach-na-h’uighe, and hither Sabbath by Sabbath gathered some of the excellent of the earth. Part of the Mission district had already suffered from the evictions, and all too soon there was to be an almost complete clearance. Among his most noted hearers may be mentioned the saintly William Calder, John MacKay or MacIain, William MacKay, Achoul, Alexander MacKay (Alastair Taillear), and his brother, Murdoch MacKay, afterwards catechist at Latheron.
- This is a sum of money (£2000) presented annually to the Church of Scotland by the Sovereign.
William Calder, a native of Ardclach, Nairn, came to Strathnaver about 1786 as one of the teachers of the Society for Propagating Christian Knowledge. Dr. Mackintosh Mackay, who knew him well, paid a beautiful tribute to his memory in a sermon preached in the Free Church of Tongue. “There must be some here present this day,” he said, “who remember your venerable catechist, William Calder. A frequent visitor was I in his dwelling while attending your parish school; and on the day when I was called to leave it, when calling to take leave at that blessed house, I trust I shall never forget, while God spares me on earth, the parting words of William Calder. And, if it please God to accept me in the great day as one of His own, redeemed by sovereign grace, I trust to carry the remembrance of what I now tell you into the kingdom above. This memorable patriarch-like person, leaning upon his spade, while he laboured in his harvest-field (and full of chastened dignity was that person in stature and expression wherever he appeared), in solemn accents and with loving looks of fatherly kindness, said: ‘My son, know thou the God of thy father, and serve Him with a perfect heart and with a willing mind; for the Lord searcheth all hearts and all the imaginations of the thoughts; if thou seek Him, He will be found of thee, but if thou forsake Him, He will cast thee off forever.’ A word spoken in season how good it is!” He died at Strathalladale in 1829, and as death approached, he addressed his body and soul in these words: “Now you have been long together, peacefully united in the mortal tie. That is now to be dissolved, and you must part. God bless you both, and may you have a happy and a blessed meeting at the resurrection.”
John MacKay or MacIain was catechist of the Ach-na-h’uaigne district. He was brought under saving impressions of the truth during the ministry of the Rev. John Skeldoch, a worldly-minded minister who kept the parish of Farr, the Presbytery of Tongue, and the Synod of Caithness and Sutherland in continual turmoil for years. After reading through the Church records, in which the shortcomings of Mr. Skeldoch are minuted, it is pleasant to know on Mr. Sage’s authority that latterly he was “a useful and highly-honoured servant of God.” John MacIain was the intimate friend of the noted William MacKay, Syre, or, as he was better known, William Shaoir (Syre), and described by Sage as “one of the burning lights of the five northern counties.” John MacIain stood at the head of his contemporaries, and it was through his recommendation that Mr. Sage was appointed missionary of Achness.
William MacKay, Achoul, was noted for his beautiful Christian, childlike simplicity. At the beginning of his religious experience he had deep convictions of sin, but deliverance came at last when Christ as his Saviour was revealed to him. “He promised to save me,” was his testimony, “I took Him at His word, and He has not allowed me once to doubt Him, not even for an hour, and that is sixty years ago.” A daughter of his was married to the well-known and revered Rev. John Robertson, Kingussie. With such notable men to uphold his hands, Mr. Sage must have been greatly encouraged, but these occupied the position of the “first three.” There was a goodly number of ripe, experienced Christians, men and women, who repaired to the meeting-houses of Achness and Ach-na-h’uaigne, and Mr. Sage in his Memorabilia Domestica has given brief sketches of a few of the most outstanding among them.
In May, 1819, the cruel order to evict the people of Strathnaver was put into force, and the beautiful strath became a desolation. It is not our intention to describe the callous indifference and cruel-heartedness of the evictors, but we take the liberty of quoting from Sage’s Memorabilia a passage that moves the deepest feelings of the heart. “On the Sabbath,” he says, “a fortnight previous to the fated day, I preached my valedictory sermon in Achness, and the Sabbath thereafter at Ach-na-h’uaigne. Both occasions were felt, by myself and by the people, from the oldest to the youngest, to be among the bitterest and most overwhelming experiences of our lives. In Strathnaver we assembled, for the last time, at the place of Langdale, where I had frequently preached before, on a beautiful green sward overhung by Robert Gordon’s antique, romantic little cottage on an eminence close beside us. The still-flowing waters of the Naver swept past us a few yards to the eastward. The Sabbath morning was unusually fine, and mountain, hill and dale, water and woodland, among which we had so long dwelt, and with which all our associations of home and native land were so fondly linked, appeared to unite their attractions to bid us farewell. My preparations for the pulpit had always cost me much anxiety, but, in view of this sore scene of parting, they caused me pain almost beyond endurance. I selected a text which had a pointed reference to the peculiarity of our circumstances, but my difficulty was how to restrain my feelings till I should illustrate and enforce the great truths which it involved with reference to eternity. The service began. The very aspect of the congregation was of itself a sermon, and a most impressive one. Old Achoul sat right opposite to me. As my eye fell upon his venerable countenance, bearing the impress of eighty-seven winters, I was deeply affected, and could scarcely articulate the psalm. I preached, and the people listened, but every sentence uttered and heard was in opposition to the tide of our natural feelings, which, setting in against us, mounted at every step of our progress higher and higher. At last all restraints were compelled to give way. The preacher ceased to speak, the people to listen. All lifted up their voices and wept, mingling their tears together. It was indeed the place of parting, and the hour. The greater number parted never again to behold each other in the land of the living. My adieu to the people of Ach-na-h’uighe was scarcely less affecting, although somewhat alleviated by the consideration that I had the prospect of ministering still to those among them who had leases of their farms, and whom Mr. Sellar, the factor, and law-agent, had no power to remove” (Memorabilia Domestica, pp. 290, 291).
After this wholesale eviction of his congregation, the Mission was dissolved, and Mr. Sage was appointed to the Gaelic Chapel, Aberdeen, in 1819. Here he ministered for a number of years until presented to the parish of Resolis in 1822. It was soon after his induction that Mr. Sage passed through an extraordinary mental and spiritual struggle, which made a lasting impression on his memory. His wife, Harriet Robertson, to whom he was devotedly attached, died in child-bed. Mr. Sage was so overcome with grief that he was not able to accompany the remains to the place of burial. Soon after this sad event, he passed into deeper waters than ever he had experienced, and his own account of this experience cannot better be given than in his own words. “Mr. MacDonald of Ferintosh often visited me,” he says, “and preached to my people. Shortly after the death of my beloved wife, he passed on his way to preach at Cromarty, and I accompanied him on horseback. The ride thither and back on the same day completely exhausted me, and I lay down on my return wishing that I might die. Such a desire came upon me so strongly that I hailed with delight every unsuccessful effort of nature to regain its former position under the pressure of present weakness, as so many sure precursors of death which would unite me to her from whom I had been so recently and sorely separated. I gradually recovered, however, but still the notion haunted my mind. Then conscience began to ask, ‘Why did I wish to die?’ My sorrows at once responded to the inquiry, ‘Just to be with Harriet.’ ‘But, was I sure of that? If Harriet was in heaven, as I could not hope but she was, was nothing else to be the consequence of death to me but to go to heaven merely to be with her?’ I was struck dumb; I was confounded with my own folly. So then, the only enjoyment I looked for after death was, not to be with Christ, but to be with Harriet! as if Harriet without Christ could make heaven a place of real happiness to me! This discovery of my own miserable sources of comfort threw me into a dreadful state of despondency. I was perambulating the garden of the manse at the time; I left it and betook myself to my bedroom, and felt all my props suddenly crumbling down under me. I was in a state of indescribable alarm. I had a bitter feeling of insecurity and of discontent. I threw myself on my knees to pray, but could not. My spirit was angry, proud, and unsubdued, and all these unhallowed feelings took direction even against God Himself. He it was who had deprived me of the object of my warmest affections. Not only so, but He had withdrawn from me the only source of consolation out of which I could draw strength to bear me up under so great a bereavement. Oh, what a God had I, then, to deal with—how like Himself—how unlike me! ‘But who is a God like unto thee, who pardoneth iniquity, and who passeth by the transgressions of the remnant of his inheritance?’ I was somewhat humbled, and I made another attempt to pray. But now I felt that I was entirely in His power. All my sins stood out before me. I attempted to come to a settlement with God about them, on the terms of a covenant of works. But I soon found that I was sadly out in my reckoning; like a schoolboy, in a long and tedious arithmetical question, who has come to an erroneous conclusion, and who has blundered more in searching out the cause of his error than when at first he erred, so it was with me. God brought to my remembrance the sin of my nature, the sins of my youth, and the sins of my daily omission and commission. I had no chance with Him; He was too holy and too just a God for me. I attempted to justify myself; I betook me to the oft-repeated, but just as often foolish and unsuccessful, plan of ‘washing myself with snow-water to make myself never so clean.’ But the result was the same as in the case of Job. ‘He plunged me into the ditch, so that my own clothes abhorred me.’ This conclusion threw me into despair; I flung myself on the floor, not to pray, for I deemed that, in existing circumstances, quite needless, but just to wait, like a condemned criminal, for the coming forth of an irrevocable sentence of condemnation. I felt that I deserved it, and I felt equally hardened to abide the result. But who is a God like unto Him in dealing with transgressions? In my then present state, and in the sovereignty of the Spirit’s influences, that passage came to me with much power: ‘I am the door.’ It glided into my mind without any previous attempt to get at it. But like a light, dim at first, it gradually and rapidly brightened. My bonds were forthwith unloosed; my darkness was dispelled. Like the lepers in Israel of old, I had only the alternative of life or death in any case. But God was gracious. I laid hold of the hope set before me. I thought, believed, and felt that I had actually entered the ‘Door.’ I found it wide enough for a sinner, and high enough as a door set open by God and not by man, by which to enter. If I may dare to say it, I did enter that door, even then, and at that solemn moment, notwithstanding the pressure of my outward bereavement and of my inward conflicts; having entered, I did experience ‘all joy and peace in believing.’ In the world I had only trouble; in Christ I had peace; and in that peace I was enabled to resign, without a murmur, my beloved Harriet, soul and body, to His holy care and keeping. I resumed prayer, and felt much liberty, comfort, and enlargement. It was in the evening of one of the days in the week immediately after her death. I had, about an hour or two before then, gone from the garden to the parlour, and risen from the table in an uncontrollable agony of sorrow, rushed out at the door, and hurried up to my room. But after the mental conflict above described, and the most gracious deliverance afforded me, I returned to the parlour, to the society of my beloved friends, in that peace of mind which Christ describes as ‘peace in him,’ in the very midst of those troubles which we must and shall have in the world, but as the result of His victory over it. My present tranquillity, compared with my former ‘fight of afflictions,’ and so immediately succeeding it, astonished my friends, and they could not but ask the reason why. I could only say that ‘the Lord had given, and the Lord had taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.’ For many days, and even weeks and months afterwards, I passed my time in prayer, in faith, and in sorrow as to the things present, but rejoicing not a little in the God of my salvation. Alas! this sunny season was succeeded afterwards by a long dreary day of coldness, clouds, and darkness, but it has never been forgotten, nor have its salutary effects been dissipated or lost” (Memorabilia Domestica, pp. 259-361).
When the great crisis came in 1843, Mr. Sage cast in his lot with the Free Church, and he has left on record, notwithstanding many fears and dark forebodings that he had before the Disruption, God’s great kindness to him even in his worldly affairs.
As a preacher, though the beginning was very unpromising, he occupied a very high place, and Dr. Kennedy, himself a master, has described the outstanding features of Mr. Sage’s preaching. “It would be difficult to determine,” he says, “whether he excelled more as a lecturer, or as a preacher, in expounding a passage, or in discoursing from a text. In each capacity he was by few excelled. Always careful to trace from its starting-point the train of thought throughout the preceding paragraph on to his text, he usually gave, in the introduction of his sermon, a most instructive exposition. When the text was reached, it was opened up with marvellous skill, and its several parts were logically arranged. Entering into it, he carried his hearers with him so gradually, and kept, as he went before them, so clear a light shining on their path that, without a sense of difficulty, they found themselves in the deep places of the subject, marvelling that they had not seen before what was now so clearly discovered to them. An attentive hearer he always kept engrossed with the subject of his sermon. Few preachers have ever laboured more to exalt their theme, and to abase themselves. His applications of doctrine to the consciousness and practice of Christians were minute and skilful. His preaching was rarely fitted to be edifying to the Church of God. His addresses to the unconverted never passed into mere declamation. He never sought to reach their conscience but through the understanding. In calm solemnity he presented to their minds the awful truth—he never brandished it before their eyes to scare them into blind alarm. Each sermon he delivered left abundant materials for future meditation in the minds of all earnest hearers; and never could they, in course of reading, meet a text on which they heard him preach, but the light of his sermon still hovered over it, and made them fain to linger on it” (Disruption Workers of the Highlands*, page 52). Such a testimony from such a man is conclusive testimony that Mr. Sage is worthy of being reckoned as one of the noted preachers of the Northern Highlands.
- Dr. Kennedy here uses the word in the sense of “remarkably well,” and not in the sense of “seldom.”
As a writer he possessed literary gifts of no mean order. To an easy command of language he added mental gifts of high quality. There were an incisiveness and piquancy in his characterisation of individuals that gave life and movement to his literary work, but this, while relished by some, sorely wounded others, especially where his characterisations were anything but complimentary. It was this feature of his posthumous Memorabilia Domestica that caused so much heart-burning notwithstanding the careful pruning it received by his son, the Rev. D. F. Sage, before it went to the printer.
In the closing years of his life his memory failed, and the strong frame became very feeble. In a conversation with Dr. Aird, who visited him and told him a deathbed saying of one of the Ross-shire worthies, he said:—”You have cheered me by telling me of these three wonders which he expected to see in heaven. I too expect to see them—my nature in the Person of the Son of God, the first, indeed, and the greatest; myself among the glorified saints, the second; and some there whom, while on earth, I never expected to be there, the third.” And so, in the eightieth year of his age, in March, 1869, passing through death, as Dr. Kennedy puts it, as one passes into sleep, he entered on the vision of the wonders he so longed to see.