(Continued from p. 204).
A VISIT to Ferintosh during the summer Communion season was evidently a time of blessing to Mr Macdonald, for he writes:—”I was brought to feel my own guilt, ignorance, and insufficiency, and to cry unto the Lord for mercy. For a week or two I was in a dejected state, and had to struggle with my heart; but, forever blessed be the name of the Lord, I was enabled to cast myself on redeeming love, and to taste somewhat of the joy and peace of believing. I could then only read my Bible, everything else was thrown aside, and nothing could satisfy my thirst but the milk of the Word.” Later he writes:—”I feel a change, a decided change in my mind, and sometimes I feel inclined to revel in it, to rejoice in the liberty which in some measure, I have to think and act as I could not formerly do.” He was now enjoying a happiness he never felt before, but this did not continue long. He had his ups and downs, and was beset by trying temptations, but out of them
the Lord delivered him. It was when he had entered on his twenty-third year that we find him making references in his diary to the mission field. Near the end of 1829 he began his tract—”The Suffering Saviour”—for his Sabbath School scholars. In a later edition, which was published while he was labouring in India, he says it was written under the impulse of a first love to the Redeemer.
On 6th January 1830, he was licensed to preach the gospel by the Presbytery of Elgin. In May 1830, he left his beloved Westerton, and as he does so he jots down in his diary:—”I am at this moment in tears. O Westerton! thou art dear to me, dear indeed. Here did Jesus first meet me—here He won my heart—here did He first employ my poor services. O Eternity! Eternity! how shall I look back and think, it may be not on Westerton, but surely of that in Westerton that connects me with Thee! It almost breaks my heart to part with every one weeping.”
A request from the people of the Scottish Church in London to labour among them was presented to him in 1830, and he accepted the same. His biographer writes:—”As a sphere of ministerial labour, London is, perhaps, the most trying in which a frail mortal can be placed. He is either caressed, and tempted to vanity, or neglected, and allowed to pine.” John Macdonald felt his unfitness for the great work of the ministry, and we find such entries in his diary as the following:—”Oh! my Lord has suffered me to fall wofully this week. He has made me a vile beast in my own estimation. Lord, I am ashamed to look up to Thee; ashamed to ask Thee anything. Mercy, mercy! pardon! pardon!” On 17th March 1831, Mr Macdonald was ordained by the Presbytery of London, and entered on his labours with earnestness and zeal for his beloved Master. After being two years in London a call was presented to him from the parish of Fodderdy, Ross-shire, but he felt it was his duty to remain in London; other calls came to him from Scotland, but he decided to remain at his post.
In 1836 his mind was more and more turned towards the mission field, and on receiving an invitation to go to Calcutta as a “missionary minister” from Dr Brunton, Convener of the Church of Scotland General Assembly’s Committee on Foreign Missions, he accepted the same. Before setting out for India he visited his friends in the North and the dear home of his childhood years, which he was never to see again. He
braced himself for the farewells that had to be taken. “My dear mother,” he says, “behaved like a Christian. As we drove slowly away, my accumulated feelings gushed forth, and for a little time I wept plentifully, and was thereby much relieved. The Lord be thanked for the special grace vouchsafed throughout this trying scene. My dear father was to follow us to London.”
Our space will not allow us to enter at length as we would like on his work as a missionary in Calcutta, but a very brief outline of his manifold labours are necessary if we are to get an idea of what kind of labourer John Macdonald was. He laboured five days every week at the Institution, instructing four different classes in the Word of God, delivering two theological lectures, and reading the evidences of Christianity. Then he preached to his own countrymen every fortnight on Sabbath morning, and every third Wednesday evening he took his turn at the Scottish Church prayer meeting. He was also busy with literary work, and acted as corresponding secretary of the Christian School-book Society. He prayed earnestly for a blessing on his labours, and at length he is able to record:—”He has granted me the still greater mercy of seeing two young Hindus in my daily Scripture classes converted to Christ, I hope sincerely. For this sight do I indeed bless Him.” Mr Macdonald had no doubt as to his duty when it became a matter of deciding whether he would remain in the Established Church in 1843 or join the Free Church. The path of duty was plain, and at this period he wrote a tract, giving reasons for the important step taken by so many missionaries and ministers leaving the Church of Scotland. As the years passed by there were unmistakable signs that the seed sown was beginning to grow and bear fruit, and we find references in his letters and diaries to these conversions.
Mr Macdonald took unexpectedly ill on 25th August 1847, with a fever, and six days thereafter he was called to his everlasting rest. Multitudes followed his remains to the grave, and wept as they bade their last farewells to the zealous herald of the Cross. Dr Kennedy touchingly tells how the sad news reached Dr Macdonald of his beloved son: “In 1847,” he writes, “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 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 better far 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 forever with the Lord’ ” (Apostle of the North, pp. 268, 269).