THE subject of this obituary was born at Braenault, Ardnamurchan, Argyllshire, in the year 1858. His father and mother were considered to be God-fearing persons. His father died when he was very young. No doubt his widowed mother did all she could, by instruction and example, to lead her children to a saving knowledge of the only Saviour of lost and ruined sinners, otherwise there could be no ground for believing that she was a saved sinner herself. Many fathers and mothers in our day would feel greatly injured in their character if one should even offer the least hint that they are not converted, and at the same time they neglect absolutely to teach their own children the fear of the Lord. Surely such value the souls of their children very little. No other cause can be considered why this should be so but that they are ignorant of the wrath due to sin and of the only remedy for the lost, which is Christ and Him crucified. Let all such consider the account they must render at the great white throne to the august Judge on the Day of Judgment.
Mr. MacKenzie came under the power of the Gospel when he was in his twenty-third year. He served at the time in a writer’s office at Lochgilphead, and attended on the ministry of the late Rev. Mr. Fraser who was then minister of the Free Church congregation there. He was for a considerable time in distress of soul on account of his sins against God.
A letter which he sent to his mother at that time shows that upon a Saturday night when he was preparing to go to rest he became so excited that he did not go to bed at all, and that all in the house remained up with him. In the morning they sent for Mr. Fraser, who came and prayed with him and persuaded him to go to bed. This excitement and want of rest weakened him so that he had to leave his clerical work for some time. This took place in the year 1881.
It was when he went to Ardnamurchan this year accompanied by an eminent uncle of his, Mr. Hugh Stewart, that the writer first met him at Acharacle. His uncle told the writer that he had been some time in his house in Glasgow; that he used to lock himself in a room, and that they could hardly prevail on him to open it or come to partake of food along with them. He looked really very dejected then, so much so that the writer could not get him away from his mind for many a day.
In the year 1885 he came to Oban as clerk in the office of Mr. A. MacArthur, writer and banker. In the early spring of 1888 the writer became acquainted with him in his own most hospitable home. He and his two sisters lived together, and a more friendly and warm-hearted home the writer has not met with than the home of Duncan MacKenzie at that time, and many happy week-ends and nights when passing through Oban we spent together. He was an elder in the Free High Church, Oban, when the writer met him there. No one could doubt the true and earnest piety which was so manifest in all his sayings and doings. But what struck the mind of the writer at that time most about him was the painful alarm and very deep concern with which he viewed the serious departure of the Free Church from her former doctrinal standards (both from the inerrancy of the Bible and also the Westminster Confession of Faith) which showed that the once noble Free Church was on her death-bed should the Lord not arise to confound her enemies. Many a long and serious conversation we had, up till the early hours of the morning, considering how her downfall could be averted. His whole heart and mind was in the cause of Christ, the prosperity of which seemed to be nearer his heart than any of his own temporal concerns. He and the late Mr. Duncan Crawford were the means of having twice a deputation at Oban in order to explain to the congregation the bearing of the Declaratory Act upon the Creed and Constitution of the Free Church, and to consider the nature of the changes made thereby. It would take up more space than this obituary is meant to occupy to enter into a detailed account of speeches delivered at these meetings. Only let it be said here that those who exposed the heresies contained in the unfortunate Act, and the destructive effects of it should it be retained in the Church, with few exceptions, changed their opposition to these expressed and published charges made by them against it, and turned their fire against such as had acted in accordance with what they themselves had held forth as the only course to be followed. This is not an unprecedented conduct on the part of churchmen, for in the past, it has been repeated whenever heresies arose in the Church of Christ. But the faithful of the elders of Oban were men of a different type, and that being so, they followed God’s Word and the dictates of a conscience guided by it. None of them could be more sincere and faithful in adhering to the original Creed and Constitution of the Free Church than Mr. MacKenzie; and this, because he and they believed it to be in strict agreement with the Word of God.
In the year 1893, after the separation took place from the Declaratory Act Church, a formal congregational meeting of the Oban Free High Church was to be held for the purpose of considering what they should do in the circumstances. Mr. MacKenzie drew up a motion to the effect that they as a congregation should forthwith join the party, who separated from the majority, who were guilty of destroying the Scriptural Creed and Constitution of the Church. An elder in the congregation agreed to move the motion at the meeting, but this elder did not attend the meeting at all. When Mr. MacKenzie saw that he was deceived and had only the scraps of the motion in his possession, he hurriedly wrote another motion similar to the one he gave to the elder and moved it at the meeting. This motion was seconded. An amendment was moved to the effect that a month should be given to the congregation to consider seriously what should be done and that another meeting should be held then in order to come to a decision. The amendment was seconded. When the two motions were put to the vote, the amendment was carried. Mr. MacKenzie intimated at once that those who supported his motion should immediately separate and begin to hold services the following Sabbath. When the Sabbath day came they met in Rockfield School, and he himself had to take the leading part at the meeting. One of the male members, who made up his mind to separate, forgot to take away his Bible from the church the night of the meeting, went in to the church on Sabbath forenoon before the service began for the Bible. The office-bearers who stood at the door expressed their great pleasure at seeing him and told him that it was a good thing they had now got rid of those who had left. He said nothing but walked into the church, lifted his Bible, and left the building. This incident confirmed Mr. MacKenzie’s conviction that the motion for a month’s delay was nothing but a dodge. When the month ended they held the meeting and came to the conclusion that they should not separate.
Some years thereafter Mr. MacKenzie decided to study with a view to the ministry of the Free Presbyterian Church. After preliminary preparation he entered the university of Glasgow. When he finished there he studied divinity in the F.P. Church. He was all the time of his studies occupied with preaching to our congregations and preaching stations. After he was licensed to preach the Gospel he was settled in Gairloch, Ross-shire. This took place on the 21st February, 1906.
While he was in Gairloch he married. This took place in 1909. A few years after this, in response to repeated calls from our people in Australia, he and his wife went there, where he laboured for about a year. Our people in Australia retain a warm recollection of that visit yet. He continued in Gairloch till the year 1921. He received then a call from the congregation of Kames, Argyllshire, which he accepted, and was inducted in that charge in September of that year.
Some years before he left Gairloch his health began to show signs that his constitution was becoming impaired. In the writer’s opinion he never got over the effect of an accident he had in London, while he was acting as the Church’s deputy to the Naval men at Portsmouth and Chatham. This was not so much on account of physical injury, though he suffered in that way, but on account of the shock which resulted from it. On account of this he was not so able to visit the congregation as he would have done otherwise; but he made an effort to appear in the pulpit on the Sabbath days and at the prayer meeting each week up to the last.
Mr. MacKenzie believed whole-heartedly in the evangelical doctrines of the Westminster Confession of Faith as being the doctrines of God’s Word, and continued to the end, to the best of his ability, to declare them to his fellow-countrymen without swerving to the right or left.
Two years ago a slight haemorrhage took place which was not considered very serious at the time. Last year it appeared again, and passed away without being considered very serious. It recurred last year on Friday 12th September. He had it on Saturday morning the 13th, but went that day to attend the funeral of one of his congregation. After he came home the haemorrhage became very serious and did not cease till the end came on the 17th September. He spoke very little during these days, but he seemed to be quite resigned and composed notwithstanding he said after this last attack came on, “I am dying.” The doctor certified that the end came through the bursting of an artery in the stomach. So Rev. Duncan MacKenzie departed to his everlasting rest which is far better than to be in this valley of tears and troubles. His remains were laid to rest on Friday, 19th September, in Kilbride Cemetery, there to “rest being still united to Christ till the resurrection.” “So man lieth down, and riseth not; till the heavens be no more, they shall not awake, nor be raised out of their sleep” (Job xiv. 12).
Mr. MacKenzie was a Free Presbyterian on account of his firm conviction that the position taken up in 1893 was the only justifiable one, and that by taking that position the F.P. Church had not only adhered simpliciter to the position of the Free Church in 1843, but that by taking it the F.P. Church adhered also to the position held by the Established Church of Scotland since the Westminster Confession of Faith and all the other relative authoritative documents were made legally the Subordinate Standards of the Presbyterian Church of Scotland both by Acts of her General Assemblies and by Acts of the Parliament of Scotland at that time, and again at the Revolution Settlement. The real value of all these enactments was, that the F.P. Church believed that they were all consistent with and agreeable to the Word of God, and that this was the reason why our forefathers endured hardships and a bloody persecution in maintaining them. Mr. MacKenzie’s grasp of this position caused him, from first to last, to hold steadfastly to the F.P. Church. He was quite capable to defend his position, as regards the above, from any efforts that were made by others from within and without our Church.
We express our sincere sympathy with his brother and sister, and very specially with his widow in her comparatively helpless, lonely, and sorrowful condition. May the Lord, the Judge of the widows, be her stay and guide.—N. C.