DUNCAN CAMPBELL misspent the precious days of boyhood and youth in carelessness and unconcernedness as to God’s claims upon all his time and service. One instance of this he often told the writer which caused him deep sorrow and abhorrence of himself. At the time when Duncan was a young lad, the great revival took place in Snizort, Skye, under the preaching of that eminent servant of Christ, the Rev. Roderick Macleod. On communion Sabbaths, people came long distances to the place. They left their horses in a glen near the congregation, but out of sight. Duncan and other wicked lads came there to spend the day riding on these horses. He never could pass that place without bowing his head at the remembrance of it. The most of the Lord’s people—all except such as were converted in their childhood—have had bitter reminiscences of the sins of their youth. This should be a warning to the young to remember their Creator in the days of their youth, and to eschew all appearance of evil. The quantity of bitter tears shed on account of sins of youth, even in this world, without taking into account eternal weeping, would make a large lake. May the Lord bestow wisdom and grace on the young to lay this to heart while they are yet in possession of the days of their youth.
So far as the writer could gather from Duncan’s remarks, he was indebted to Rev. John Macrae (Mac-Rath Mor) as God’s messenger to awaken his dead soul. It seems that his conviction was deep and alarming. The writer learned this from the late eminent man of God, Archibald Crawford, Tighnabruaich. He told the writer of a young man he became acquainted with at Greenock; that of all the men he had met with he never met any who was so inquisitive as to the real meaning of the Word of God. This young man was Duncan Campbell. “I should like to know what became of him,” he said. The writer then had not met Duncan. This is a common experience as regards every sinner convinced of sin by the Holy Ghost. He does understand a great deal of the condemning power of the law of God, and of the wrath and curse to which its transgression exposes him, but as to the meaning of God’s way of deliverance through faith in Christ and Him crucified, he is completely in the dark. Therefore the question always is—”What must I do to be saved?” But the Lord came to his deliverance by bestowing on him the gift of precious faith, and from that day his love to Christ, to His truth, ordinances, and people began to shine in the world. It could truly be said of his faith that it worked by love, and consequently that it was not a dead faith.
In the month of May 1893, some of the leading Christian men in Skye called a meeting at Achnasheen in order to consider what steps should be taken if the General Assembly of the Free Church took no steps to retrace her departure from God’s truth and her subordinate standards that week in Edinburgh. At Strathcarron Station the writer was directed to the compartment of the train in which these men travelled. We hardly got out of the station when Duncan began to ask questions about the meaning of passages of the Word of God, and also about the real condition of the Free Church now under the Declaratory Act. It began to dawn on our mind that this was very probably the man Mr Archibald Crawford spoke of two years previously, so we asked him whether he knew Mr Crawford. “Yes, I did know him, and I met not many men like him,” was his reply. At the meeting at Achnasheen, when he saw that some were present who moved delay in coming to any definite finding that day, he appealed repeatedly to one who was present to rise and speak. It was very manifest that he had no patience with half measures when the truth and cause of God were at stake, which was true of him to the end. A motion was brought forward to the effect that, if the Assembly would not take steps to repeal the Declaratory Act, all who would vote for the motion would be bound to separate from the Free Church in order to maintain her original constitution as she was settled in 1843; but that if she did take steps to repeal it, their voting for the motion would not be binding on any. When the first motion was put, six voted for it, and twenty-six voted for the second motion. Duncan Campbell was one of the first to vote for it. So there were these twenty-six bound to separate before the matter came up at the Assembly two days later. This was a real relief to Duncan, who had been greatly harassed by the trend of affairs concerning the faith once for all delivered to the saints during many years in the Free Church. The Assembly refused to retrace their departures from the faith, and consequently the separation had to take place. The week following the above meeting the writer saw Mr Crawford, and told him that he had met Duncan Campbell. His face brightened up as he asked—”Is he still a catechiser?” “Yes, that was how I understood it was he.” “What does he think of the present crisis in the Church?” He is now separate from that Church in terms of a motion passed last Tuesday at Achnasheen. “I am exceedingly pleased to hear of Duncan,” he said, “and that he has taken his stand for God’s truth and the principles of the Reformation in a cloudy and dark day.” Duncan and Mr Crawford met several times in Tighnabruach after that to the satisfaction and rejoicing of their hearts.
Duncan acted as the Church’s representative in the congregation of Glendale, Skye, for some time, to the comforting of the Lord’s people and the full satisfaction of the people as a whole. He told the writer long afterwards that he was now full of wonder that the Lord did not cut him off at that time on account of his selfishness, and how full of the flesh and self-complacency he was when he thought that he had liberty in speaking to the people from God’s truth. At the same time, he was, since the writer knew him, a very humble and self-denying Christian. But, like the prophet, he was made to dig deeper into the chambers of his own heart, where he found worse abominations than he knew up till then to the day of his death.
But the brotherly love and unanimity which existed from first to last between him and that eminent man of God, Neil Mackinnon, came nearest to the Scripture rule—”Let nothing be done through strife or vain glory, but in lowliness of mind let each esteem other better than themselves,” of anything the writer met with. Neil Mackinnon had a place in his heart which no other man could come up to, and he held the deepest love of Neil’s heart towards any man. It was evident that, at the same time, the love of Christ reigned supreme in the heart of each. Neil urged upon Duncan to preside at the service on a Sabbath evening a short time before he was called to his everlasting rest; but Duncan blankly refused to do so. After Neil had fallen asleep in Jesus, Duncan told the writer, with tears running down his cheeks, how painful it was to him, now that he had refused, especially because Neil said to him at the time—”You will see the day that you will be sorry for it, Duncan.” The first time, after Neil’s death, he spoke on the Friday