DEATH comes to all, alike to the righteous and the wicked. Thus the original penalty threatened by God upon Adam and his descendants on account of sin takes effect in every case. But death to the righteous is by far a different thing to death to the wicked. With regard to the former, the sting of death is removed and assumes for them the benevolent character of a friend in giving a speedy entrance of their souls to eternal bliss. While with respect to the latter, the sting remains, and death effects a quick removal to everlasting woe. O what a solemn thought!
To the former class we believe Angus Macleod belonged. He was 81 years old when he died last March. Owing to the singular reticence of this good man about himself, his earlier and later experience, we are unable to give a minute account of how the Lord began to deal with him. But that He dealt with him graciously was evident to all who knew him and heard him speaking in public. Such was his reserve and bashfulness that his sterling worth could not be known
by any but by those who were accustomed to hear his edifying exposition of the truth, and by strangers listening to him at the Friday Fellowship Meetings. On the latter occasions he invariably gave expression to some original idea that clung to one’s mind, and his comparisons were apt and pointed. What fault could be found with him was in studiously avoiding their application as bearing upon himself, but as bearing truly upon those who were God’s people.
It is a remarkable fact that he never made a public profession of his faith, and it might well be that his reserved attitude and backwardness arose partly at least from the disadvantageous use which Satan might make of it to himself, that he did not bear the public profession on the side of his Lord. The writer put it seriously to him on one occasion that he was outwith the path of duty, and that there was some inconsistency in his expounding the truth publicly in the church, and his not bearing public witness by coming forward to the Lord’s Table. After we got his reply we did not again approach him on the subject. His answer was to this effect:—”Some people imagine I am following the example given by that great man, Alexander Kerr, who once lived here (the latter was an eminent man in his day); but that is not at all the case. I have to confess that an occasion arose at one time of my life and in my experience, in which I found it easy or at least possible to communicate. But I let that opportunity pass, and I never got it again. That is my sole reason.”
He laboured under physical disabilities for three or four years of his life, which rendered him incapable of attending on the means of grace. He was withal a most intelligent man, and read incessantly and unwearingly the writings of the Puritans. He quoted these authors with ease, as he was endowed with a retentive memory. Humility and modesty characterised him in no small degree. The Word of God was his chief text-book, and all else will have to take the background to give supreme place to the word of life when the Christian is drawing nigh to the river. Nothing else will support the gracious soul in so immediate a prospect as the heavenly food. He was also a man very much exercised in prayer. What added grief and poignancy to his removal when such was to be looked for at his age, was the early death of one of his two daughters, at 41 years of age, three days after her father’s death—of pleurisy and pneumonia. An only son—and a most dutiful and respectful son he was—
was drowned during the war. This, humanly speaking, hastened the mother’s death some years ago, for she was never well after the loss of this son. It told deeply on the father as well. But he is gone, and the Lochinver congregation is poorer, though he is the gainer. He was staunch in his adherence to the principles for which the Free Presbyterian Church came out and contended.
To the only surviving and lonely daughter we extend our deepest sympathy and prayer that her father’s God be her God and portion for ever.
M. M.