THE Synod express and record in their Minutes their deep sorrow and sense of the loss sustained by the Free Presbyterian Church and by the cause of Christ in the world through the removal of their beloved brother and faithful servant of Christ, the Rev. Donald Macfarlane, late minister of our Church at Dingwall, on the 4th day of November 1926, at the ripe age of 92 years.
Mr Macfarlane was born at Vallay, North Uist, in the year 1834. He studied Arts and Divinity in the University and the Free Church College, Glasgow, and was licensed to preach the gospel by the Free Church Presbytery of Skye and Uist. He received a call from the congregation of Strathconan in 1876, which he accepted, and was ordained there. In the year 1879 he received and accepted a call from the congregation of Moy. The congregation of Kilmallie called him, and he became their minister in 1888, and in 1893 he received a call from the Raasay congregation, which he accepted. In each of these congregations he was truly beloved for his work’s sake, and revered as a faithful preacher of the gospel of the grace of God.
In the year 1892 the General Assembly of the Free Church passed, through the Barrier Act, the Declaratory Act, thus making it “a binding law and a constitution in the Church.” A protest was lodged against it, and an appeal was made to the next Assembly to take steps to have it repealed. When, at the Assembly of 1893, this matter was considered it became very evident, by the large majority that voted for retaining the Act, and by the tergiversation of those who had protested the previous year, that the two alternatives were to remain in that Church under a false creed and a mutilated constitution, or to separate from her communion in order to maintain the original position of the Free Church of Scotland, which every office-bearer was bound by his ordination vows to do. Mr Macfarlane chose to adhere to his vows to God and men—that he would “assert, maintain and defend the whole doctrine of the Confession,” so he stepped forward and read and tabled his protest. In it he refused to submit from that day to the jurisdiction of the Courts of that Church as now constituted under her changed creed and constitution, declared his adherence to the original position taken up by the Free Church in 1843; that he and such as might adhere to him would take immediate steps to revive the Free Church in her original position; and that he claimed all the civil and ecclesiastical rights which he and they held hitherto as Free Churchmen. A Deed of Separation was drafted, and on the 14th day of August 1893, a Presbytery was constituted, and the Deed of Separation was adopted and signed by Revs. D. Macfarlane and D. Macdonald, with Mr Alex. Macfarlane, elder. Thus a legal separation from the then Free Church took place, to which Mr Macfarlane adhered faithfully to the day of his death.
Mr Macfarlane received a call from the Free Presbyterian congregation of Dingwall in the year 1903. He accepted it, and continued his ministry there with much acceptance till it pleased the Lord to call him home to be for ever with Himself, in 1926.
The Synod would express their thankfulness to the Lord for enabling Mr Macfarlane to hold fast the Word of God and the subordinate standards of the Church of the Reformation in the face of great opposition, even from his former fellow-ministers and elders, and also in suffering the loss of all they could deprive him of as regards manses, churches, and salary. He “took joyfully the spoiling of his goods, knowing in himself that he had in heaven a better and an enduring substance.” Of him it may truly be said:—”I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith; henceforth there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, shall give me at that day.”
The Synod would express their sincere sympathy with Mrs Macfarlane in her sorrow and bereavement, and also with all who mourn for their and our loss, which was undoubtedly his great gain, for it is written—”They who sleep in Jesus, God will bring with Him.”