WE much regret the delay which has occurred in putting in print something about Mr Samuel Clark, Unapool. Our dear late friend departed on the first Sabbath of March 1925, and was thus about 71 years of age. Born near Oykell, Sutherlandshire, his father, who was employed as a shepherd, had migrated from Dumfriesshire a few years before Samuel was born, who was the youngest of the family. His father, according to the testimony of not a few, was a worthy Christian, and was ordained an elder in the Free Church of Rosehall. When the first Union controversy between the Free Church and U.P. arose, Samuel’s father was very strongly opposed to this mooted proposal, and we often heard from Samuel what his father used to say with regard to that Union—”When this Union takes place, the Free Church will be as dead as a church door nail.” How accurate his forecast was, what has happened since has truly verified. The antecedents and consequents of the Union of 1900 have most correctly borne out the dictum of the worthy man.
Samuel Clark was thus brought up in the nursery of Christian example and conduct, yet he was without God and without hope up to the last stages of his life. And, while possessing by the mercy of God these inestimable privileges, the temptations to strong drink were too overpowering for him to resist. This strong inclination expressed itself, at due intervals, right up to within recent years. The intemperate habit formed in youth, often, if not always, through the influence of association with “the evil communication which corrupts good manners,” cannot be easily renounced until a “stronger” than “the strong man armed that keepeth his palace and his goods in peace,” come to disarm and take possession. Samuel Clark’s case was an apt illustration of this. The writer heard it related that when Samuel, as a young man, happened to come home the worse of liquor, his mother would most naturally remonstrate with him. Whereupon the father would say—”You leave Sam; the Lord will yet bring him within the fold.”
Let it be recorded here that, notwithstanding this inexcusable failing of conduct and of character, he was otherwise as a natural man most exemplary. He cherished the greatest respect for all truly God-fearing people; his tongue was free of foul words and swearing; the Sabbath Day he observed with care and strictness; family worship was regularly kept; the works of pious authors, particularly Spurgeon’s arresting sermons, were diligently and unweariedly perused, and his house and heart were most hospitably open to all strangers, but especially the Lord’s people. With all these commendable qualities, he could join with the light and frivolous, and sit down at times at the drunkard’s table.
The impression which his father’s Christian life had formed in his mind never wholly left him; and we believe it was true of him as of those towards whom the Lord has a purpose of saving grace, that those early impressions of divine things came at intervals with renewed force to his mind, and that at recurring lapses of behaviour he sought to atone for the guilt which they laid on his conscience, by resorting to greater diligence in religious duties and performances. That Samuel Clark’s conscience was often, after these lapses, smarting to the quick we have no doubt. But such “goodness is as the morning cloud and the early dew that passeth away.”
For nearly two years he passed through severe anguish in his soul over his sins and over a misspent life. His sleep had gone, and he tossed and reeled day and night under a sense of God’s just wrath against sin. No sinner out of hell was so great as he was now. Truth after truth, which hitherto lay dormant in his memory, blazed forth through his soul with conviction and condemning power. He was most remarkably well read in the Scriptures; he had a retentive memory, and the most daring scoffer would have to retreat with a shut mouth from Samuel Clark, owing to the unusual knack he had of quoting the most apt and pertinent passages of Scripture condemnatory of their views and character.
At last the day of his espousal had come. That well-known truth uttered by the Saviour—”For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life,” was the truth the Holy Spirit made use of in taking the scales from off his eyes, and in renewing him in his mind and will so as to know God and His Son Jesus Christ savingly. It was a day of jubilee to him, liberty, deliverance from bondage, sin, and abject slavery—restoration to God’s favour and indescribable experience of His heart-melting love and grace. He was a new man, beaming with joy unspeakable, and full of glory. This great change was brought about after the close of the Great War. Shortly after he had thus tasted of the love of God and the liberty wherewith Christ makes His people free, this truth impelled him to go to Scourie Communion in October, and bear public witness for Christ, according to the injunction—”Whosoever, therefore, shall confess me before men, him will I confess also before my Father which is in heaven. But whosoever shall deny me before men, him will I also deny before my Father which is in heaven.” The Session felt no difficulty in receiving him into full communion.
It would appear that the Lord was fast preparing him for another world, as his life henceforth was destined to be short. His interest in worldly matters was waning as fast, and he seemed to actually live in the truth, meditation, and prayer. Those who heard him speak on the Fridays of a Communion will not forget the depth of feeling and unaffected earnestness which pervaded his utterances, and his whole bodily frame acted in unison with the deep passions of his soul. Sovereign grace and mercy were divine qualities which he delighted to speak of, as they were so wonderfully exhibited in his own case, and he always emphasised that any black sinner still out of hell could be saved when he was. In reviewing his past life he would be overwhelmed with wonder at the long-suffering of God towards him, and at the divine preservation until he should be plucked as a brand out of the burning.
The wondrous efficiency of the blood of Christ as comprehending the whole of His obedient and suffering life held him at times in feelings of rapture and amazement. At a communion time in Lochinver, when he had come from a morning prayer-meeting, he was asked if he was called to pray. “Called to pray?” he said, “the place for the like of me is praying at the back of the rocks and in the peat hags.” Some time after his conversion he expressed a desire to hold worship on Sabbath in his house for any of the Unapool people who would like to come, and as they came almost in a body he had to go to the school, and while he was able the meetings were held regularly.
He followed the Free Presbyterian Church from its inception from conviction, and felt in his enlightened days more and more the increasing need of holding to the Scriptural and confessional testimony in a back-sliding age. There was a lurking internal trouble which predisposed him to think he would not live long, and over a year before he died he underwent an operation of a nature that gave only a temporary relief. He suffered much in his body in the end. But he is gone to be, we believe, with Christ, which is far better. To his devoted wife, who tenderly nursed him all along, and the members of the family, we express our sincere sympathy and pray his God will be their God.
M. M.