JOHN MACIVER was born at Dundonald, at the head of Little Lochbroom in the year 1826, so far as can be ascertained. Both his parents were church members, and had a family of six sons and three daughters. John was the youngest. The parents must have been possessed of true piety, and must have brought up their family in the fear and admonition of the Lord, seeing each one of them was known to be truly pious. John had an aunt, Jane Maciver, who was notable for her piety. When John was about thirty years of age, the Holy Ghost convinced him of his guilty, sinful condition. So terrible was the experience he had of the wrath of God against his sins, that he was twelve days and nights without a wink of sleep. His agony was so great that he tore a new blanket to small fragments, unconscious of what he was doing. But the Lord, by His own voice, said to the awful storm that raged in his soul, and the billows that were going over his head—”Peace, be still, and there was a great calm.” Peace with God through the blood of Christ reigned in his conscience, and he then sung like the children of Israel on the eastern shore of the Red Sea. He spoke in after life of these things with great awe. The Rev. George Macleod, who was the minister of the Free Church at Lochbroom at this time, was an able minister of the New Testament, not in the letter only, but also in the Spirit. He was removed by the General Assembly of the Free Church shortly after the Disruption of 1843 from Maryburgh to Lochbroom, where he had a very large congregation, among whom his faithful ministry was fruitful in the conversion of many. He had assisting him a catechist, Finlay Matheson, who was a faithful, devoted, God-fearing man. The love and esteem John had for his minister and catechist must have been warm and very deep-rooted, for up to the last day of his life one could not be long in his company without observing it. So death—for the two were long dead before the writer met John—cannot separate the Lord’s people in their love to one another. I believe this is as true of those who departed to their everlasting rest as it is of those left by them in the world. For it is the love of God shed abroad in their hearts by the Holy Ghost.
John Maciver got married about the age of thirty-three years. Mrs Maciver was a true help-meet for John in every way. He lived at Scorraig by this time. The whole of the people of that district used to go on the Lord’s day by boats to Ullapool. When the day happened to be stormy, so that the boats could not go, John and his wife went through a trackless mountain for nine miles each way, and did not go to any place for food till they arrived home at Scorraig. This manifested a real hungering for the bread of life, which is Christ crucified set forth in the gospel. In our poor, deluded, and carnally-minded generation, men can be found who would go as far to attend a football match or a meeting of what they designate, “Comrades of the War,” but to go twenty miles to hear the gospel is considered foolish work; but what will be the end of these silly frivolities? Men will certainly change their judgment of such sinful practices, and despising and rejecting of Christ, either before they go to the grave, or otherwise in eternity, when weeping and gnashing of teeth will not end their woeful despair for ever and ever. But John Maciver had no cause to sorrow for the diligence with which he attended the means of grace appointed by God for His own glory and the salvation of sinners either here or hereafter.
John Maciver and Kenneth, his brother, were married to two sisters. The two families lived each in its own house—a double-roofed house, having a passage within from the one to the other. They acted toward each other as one family, but I understand that each family kept worship by themselves, except when ministers or godly men came the way, when they all were present together at family worship. This order was kept so as to observe God’s commandment—”Train up a child in the way he should go; and when he is old, he will not depart from it.” This rule is certainly given to parents; if they neglect it, they will assuredly reap a bitter fruit from it. But both John and Kenneth Maciver and their wives did all they could to train their children in the way they should go. The fame of Scorraig House for hospitality spread over the whole of the West Highlands and Islands of Scotland. The two husbands, their wives, and the two families manifested such heartiness and delight in entertaining strangers that they made one feel, unknown to himself, as being really one of the family, and at home, in fact.
John’s brother, Kenneth, was also a beautiful Christian man. He was very retiring and humble, but when a person knew him a little it became apparent that he was one of the Lord’s secret doves, that delight to hide “in the secret places of the stairs,” but whose countenance and voice are sweet to the Lord.
John told the writer that the Rev. George Macleod refused to give him baptism until he would fulfil his duty by becoming a member in full communion with the Church; but he did not obey him, and when he saw that he could not prevail on him, he gave him baptism. Mr Macleod was right in putting pressure on him to do what was clearly John’s duty, and from the way he spoke of it, he seemed to regret that he did not take that important and serious step then. Mr Macleod passed to his everlasting rest before he decided to become a member in full communion. When he went to the Rev. Mr Macmillan, the successor of Mr Macleod, to consult him about the matter, he did not ask him any questions, but handed him a token. John had a long mental temptation on this account. He became an elder in the congregation not long after he was received a member. This was many years before the writer met him for the first time, which was in 1894.
The portion of Scripture which made him decide to leave the then Free Church and join the Free Presbyterian Church was Rev. iii. 10—”Because thou hast kept the word of my patience, I also will keep thee from the hour of temptation, which shall come upon the whole world, to try them that dwell upon the earth.” The whole of the people on the Scorraig side of Little Lochbroom followed him and another godly man, Roderick Mackenzie, Achmore, at that time. They had a meeting-house of their own building, which the then Free Church could not claim. The story is told that when this meeting-house was to be built John went from his own house to the house of Roderick, and counted every step of the way, which would be fully two miles—he divided the number of steps by two. On his way back he counted up to the half, and set up a few stones to mark the place, so that he and Roderick should have the same distance to walk there. The love shown by the two, the one to the other, was really beautiful, and the scripture was truly fulfilled in their case—”Let each esteem the other better than himself.” Roderick pre-deceased John, but the love lived on still.
John told the writer that at one time they were going by his own boat to herring fishing to Glen Dubh, and that when they were nearing the point of Stoer he felt sleepy, it being near midnight, and asked another man to take the helm while he lay down to have a few minutes’ sleep. The man relieved him, and he went into the den to sleep. He had been only a few minutes asleep when he saw in a dream that another fishing boat under full sail, and borne along with a good gale of wind, was about to collide with their boat by striking her amidship. He sprang out of bed, and shouted to the man at the helm—”Put the helm to, put the helm to”—the which the man did, with the result that the two boats rubbed their gunwales against one another. Had John not given the order to the helmsman in their boat, they had been probably cut in two by the other. This was a marvellous intervention of God’s providence, and a proof that He that keeps Israel slumbers not nor sleeps.
Speaking to the question on the Friday of a communion at Coigach, Ross-shire, he said—”I often compare myself to an old boat we have at Scorraig. When the winter storms and high tides approach, I haul her up above high water mark. In dry and frosty weather her planks become so riven that when rain comes the water runs out, so that she will not retain a drop of it. When the spring of the year comes, and the work by boats is required, I will be seriously considering whether I should launch her any more. But I do launch her, and put her out on anchor, when, on account of her riven condition, she sinks down to the gunwale. After she remains in that submerged condition for a week, I bring her ashore and let the water go. So you would be surprised how water-tight she becomes. This is how I feel when I am at home in Scorraig, riven, having retained nothing of all I heard or read. I will be concluding that I should not go to communions any more, seeing I let all I hear slip. But when the communions begin my needs press me to attend; and when I am steeped in the gospel during the five days of a communion season, I will be surprised how much I retain of what I hear.”
Another Friday, at Gairloch, he said:—”When I am at home at Scorraig I come to the conclusion a hundred times in a week that I never had grace; but I never come to the conclusion that some ministers have not got grace. When I hear such ministers preaching I come to the conclusion some times—”Well, if you have got grace, I have grace myself.””
At another communion on Friday—the question being I. Peter ii. 2—he made the remarks:—”Babes feed on nothing but milk, so these new-born babes feed on nothing but the sincere milk of the Word. Babes, to begin with, take milk from anyone, but by-and-bye they will not take it from every one. They begin to discover their own mother from strangers, so it is with these new-born babes, they begin to discern between their mother, the Church of God, and strangers; and between the sincere milk of the Word and the corruptions of learned but carnal men and churches. One mark of these babes is that they have come to the conclusion that their own words and profession are of no value, and that if they will be saved it must come altogether from God’s gratuitous grace and mercy. Another mark is that they cannot endure to see the Word of God torn to pieces by infidels if they can help it; for it is their only comfort in their spiritual and temporal trials in this world.”
He told the writer that every time he went to the Lord’s table, the enemy harassed him by suggesting that he was never properly received by a Session of the Church. The next time they met at a communion at Laide there were three or four elders in the house of Mr John Mackenzie, Udrigle, so the writer thought that he should endeavour to put an end to the trouble Satan was giving John about the way he was received to church membership. So having got all away but John and the elders, the writer said to them that they would have a prayer, and after that began to examine John. When he was done examining, he asked the elders, “If John Maciver had not been a member till now would you be quite satisfied that he should be received to-night by us to full membership?” They all answered in the affirmative, and the writer concurred. The next time he met the writer at Laide communion, John said—”I did not understand at all what you meant by examining me here last year, but I fully realised it since, for Satan has ceased to harass me at the Lord’s table.”
Mrs Maciver was removed to her everlasting rest on the 17th August 1917. They had a family of five sons and four daughters; one of the sons died at the age of 20 years. So John was being stripped of connections that bound him to this world. The removal of his worthy co-partner in life snapped a cord at his heart. He felt it deeply, but “was dumb, opening not his mouth, because God did it.” His vital strength began to decline perceptibly, but up to the last he suffered very little bodily pain. He became weaker on Monday night, the 14th February, but was able to keep family worship till Thursday night, when he had to stop three times before he finished the prayer. All his faculties continued unimpaired till the last. He bid all his family that were about him good-bye, and passed away as if in his sleep on Friday morning, 18th February 1927, probably at the great age of one hundred and one years. His remains were laid to rest in the Dundonald Church-yard by his family and a large assemblage of friends from distant places there to remain “still united to Christ till the resurrection. At the resurrection he shall be raised up in glory . . . and shall be perfectly blessed in the full enjoyment of God to all eternity.”
The writer desires to express his deepest sympathy with each member of his family, and would pray that the Lord would endue each one of them with His own grace, so that on the last day they will appear on the right hand of the Lord along with their parents when He shall appear on the great white Throne.
The Rev. Donald Macleod, his minister, desired the writer, when at St Jude’s communion last November, to write this obituary of John Maciver. The writer desires to convey to Mr Macleod and the Session of Ullapool his sincere sympathy with them in the loss they sustained by Mr Maciver’s removal from their midst. May the Lord raise up the sons to fill the place left empty by his removal.
“Help, Lord, for the godly man ceaseth; for the faithful fail from among the children of men.”
N. C.
Faith’s eyes, that can see through a millstone, can see through a frown of God, and under it read God’s thoughts of love and peace. Hold fast Christ in the dark; surely ye shall see the salvation of God.
-Rutherford.