A Brand Plucked Out of the Fire.
The case of Angus Maclean (Aonghas Dhomhnull Sgiathanach) illustrates very clearly the sovereignty of the love and grace of the Most High in calling whom He will. On this ground, we deem it a duty to send an account of his days of ignorance and of the mercy bestowed upon him to the Magazine. Donald Maclean, the father of Angus was a worthy, pious man, whole-hearted and zealous in his adherence to Disruption principles, and he sought to train up his large family of sons and daughters in the fear and ways of God. This training was blessed to some members of his household, particularly to his daughter, Mrs. Angus Maciver, Garden Road, Stornoway, who was called to her rest over two years ago, after adorning her profession to old age by a godly and consistent life.
But it was far otherwise with his son, Angus. For the first 70 years of his sojourn here, it seemed as though he were the worse, instead of the better of his father’s godly example. He became early addicted to drink and being an outstandingly strong man physically, he delighted in using his strength in fighting every man who could even remotely be considered as strongly built as himself. Fishing seasons were Angus’s gala time. When well reinforced within with strong drink, he would go among the East Coast fishermen and would tramp on their toes in order to provoke a fight. He had been known to walk miles for the purpose of challenging one to combat who was cast up to him, as superior in pugilistic expertness. There was, however, one trait of the early training visible in Angus, even in his wildest days, and that was his respect for real piety. Malcolm Macleod, our late revered missionary in Ness, used to tell how Angus in one of the East Coast fishing towns, constituted himself Malcolm’s bodyguard and dared all and sundry to offer the least injury to the missionary’s person or reputation. However, he spent his years wasting a goodly part of the
fruits of hard labour in folly and utterly careless about attendance on the public means of grace. About the age of 70, he became in a very short time, totally blind, an affliction which at first only added fuel to the rebelliousness of a depraved and hardened heart.
When the schoolmaster wishes to impart of his knowledge he makes the black-board, his basis to show up the whiteness of the chalk with which the lesson is made to stand out conspicuously before the eyes of his pupils, and the blacker the board, the clearer the lesson. It was on the black-board of 70 years of diligent service to Satan and sin, that the Great Master was to write with the white chalk of His free and sovereign grace, a lesson of abounding love and grace and mercy. Angus spent the last 8 years of his life gazing at it. He never lost sight of the blackness; it became blacker and blacker as time went on, but in the same proportion the whiteness became all the whiter. We now come to the time when the secret counsel and purpose of mercy encircling this aged sinner was to be made manifest. It was a Sabbath evening in Stornoway and his wife managed with the greatest difficulty to persuade him to allow her to lead him to church. Rev. Neil Macintyre had for his text that evening, if I am rightly informed, “I know that my Redeemer liveth.” Angus came to that service dead and utterly indifferent to spiritual realities. He came from the House of God, if not rejoicing that Job’s God was his Redeemer, at least, with the conviction that he could have no peace until salvation through Jesus Christ would be his. He was not left long in any case, until, as he would say himself, he drank his first milk, and wanted to go back again to the place where he drank it. Shortly afterwards he made a public profession of his faith in Christ and obedience to Him.
His exercises in prayer and speaking to “the question” became straightway delightful to the Lord’s people. He hardly ever opened his mouth without speaking about himself as the man
who spent 70 years feeding the swine. Many of us well remember the day in Stornoway when he was asked to speak to “the question.” Having got up, he asked: “Who are they asking just now?” He answered, “They are asking Angus Maclean.” “What Angus Maclean do you mean?” “What! don’t you know Angus Maclean, Aonghas Dhomhnnull Sgiath-anach.” “No, I don’t know the man at all.” “What! don’t you know Angus Maclean from Sandwick-hill, the notorious sinner? Surely everyone has heard about him.” “Is that the man they are asking to speak to the question? A man that spent 70 years of his life feeding his lusts in the service of the Devil. If God has had mercy on Angus Maclean, no sinner whoever he be, if he is on this side of hell, need despair.” On many such occasions, he would say: “Friends, I am only a few years old, I am just an infant. The time I spent in the ways of sin is altogether lost time.”
As Angus Maclean ripened for heaven, he was more and more given over to prayer. Owing to his former careless life, he knew very little of the letter of the Scriptures. He made up for this loss in measure by repeating the texts which appealed to him. His wife who nursed him faithfully and tenderly during the years of his blindness did much to help him by reading to him. When totally confined to bed the sound of a footstep in his room was the signal for Angus to sit up in bed and pray. The visitor if one of his spiritual brethren would have to pray too. He was a true example of what is written; “They that shall escape, shall escape and they shall be like doves of the valleys, all of them mourning, everyone for his iniquity,” (Ezek. vii. 16). He so detested his past riotous living, that he would not taste spirits even as a medicine. His daily walk lay between what the King would say to them on His right hand, “Come ye blessed of my Father inherit the Kingdom,” and what He would say to those on the left, “Depart from me, ye cursed into everlasting fire.” He pleaded earnestly to be delivered; from hearing the latter and to be prepared for
hearing the former. We fully believe Angus is now inheriting that blessing, and may the Blessed One prepare us in like manner. He passed away at Breaselete in April, 1932, and his dust lies in Sandwich-hill Cemetery, till the heavens be no more. May the Lord bless his witness against sin and for the Saviour to the surviving widow, relatives and friends. M. G.