THE subject of this obituary sketch was born at Bolwarra, on the Hunter River, New South Wales, on the 25th June, 1848, and passed away at her late home, “Ian-Rollo,” Brush-grove, Clarence River, on the 16th July, 1935, having thus attained the ripe age of eighty-seven years. Mrs. Grant was the daughter of the late Mr. and Mrs. John MacDonald. The latter was a native of Glenelg, Scotland, while Mrs. MacDonald, afterwards Mrs. Cameron, was a native of Portree, Skye, which she left with her family and other emigrants, for Australia, in her early girlhood, having had the poignant experience of losing her mother, a Mrs. Macaulay, on the voyage out, and seeing her remains consigned to the deep. Thus Mrs. Grant’s mother, then Miss Macaulay, had in very early life not only to confront the severe and testing ordeal of the hardships and privations inseparable from early pioneering life in the Australian bush, but the further heart-rending experience of doing so without the needful guidance and care of an affectionate mother’s superintending sympathy.
Mrs. Grant’s mother married the above-named John MacDonald at seventeen years of age, but was left a widow with two young children at the age of twenty-two. One of the children, a son, died in early boyhood. In the early Autumn of the year 1857, a disastrous flood of unrecorded unprecedented severity in this district overwhelmed an extensive area of the fertile Hunter valley, carrying such devastation in its wake, and resulting in such widespread damage that most of the hitherto numerous and prosperous Scottish Highland community in the district felt constrained to migrate north to the Manning and Clarence Rivers. This event is important also as severing the pastoral connection, though not the mutual attachment, that had for years obtained between the highly-favoured people, and the noted evangelical preacher, the Rev. Alexander MacIntyre, who then removed to Geelong, Victoria.
This eminent preacher is of special interest to Free Presbyterians, as he was the honoured instrument in the hand of the Holy Spirit in the conversion of the late Rev. Donald MacDonald of Shieldaig. The late Rev. Neil Cameron, Glasgow, said of him that he “was truly a polished shaft in the hand of the Holy Spirit, and many, not only in Scotland, but also in Canada and Australia, will bless the adorable Head of the Church throughout eternity for making the feet of this witness beautiful upon the mountains of these widely separated lands.” (“The Rev. Alexander MacIntyre, Evangelist,” by Rev. J. Campbell Robinson.)
Among those who thus moved northwards to the Clarence River were Mr. and Mrs. Cameron, Mrs. Grant being then about ten years of age. In addition to buying land from the Government for himself and the family, Mr. Cameron bought on behalf of his step-daughter, who had been left in comfortable circumstances by her late father, a piece of land at Woodford-Leigh. Here, after it had been cleared of virgin bush, and converted into a prosperous farm, Mr. and Mrs. Hugh Grant’s family, with the exception of the eldest son, who was born in Sydney, were born and brought up. These details are interesting as showing that Mrs. Grant’s passing severs an interesting link between two periods in the history of the Clarence River settlements—the early days of pioneering in the bush under very primitive conditions, and the present day when electricity not only supplies the light, but also operates the machinery which milks the cattle on the farms that skirt the magnificent Clarence River.
In tracing the providential influences which moulded the religious history of the subject of our notice, and prepared the soil of her immortal soul for the reception and future germination of the seed of the Kingdom of grace, we may mention that Mrs. Grant had the inestimable advantage of being under the religious tuition of her paternal grandmother, who remained with the family till her death. This grandmother was a woman of deep piety and practical godliness. She not only taught her grandchild to read Gaelic, but promised that if she would learn the Shorter Catechism in that language from cover to cover she would give her a new dress. Where was the girl that would despise such an offer? and the eagerly-sought prize was won with commendable alacrity and efficiency. She further taught the fatherless girl the simple but comprehensive petition: “I have no father, be Thou my Father.” Another precious privilege enjoyed by her, first, while under ten years of age in her native Hunter Valley, and for many years afterwards during his periodical visits to the Clarence, was that of attendance on the faithful and fruitful ministry of the Rev. Alexander MacIntyre, already referred to. In after years she attended the ministry of the late Rev. John Finlayson, Brushgrove, a native of Mugary, Portree, Skye, and who was Free Church minister of Coigach, Ross-shire, before proceeding to Australia for health reasons. His ministry at Brushgrove was brief, but evangelically faithful. A tombstone marks his last resting-place in the Presbyterian section of Maclean Cemetery, the inscription stating that he died at Brushgrove in the year 1890 in the forty-fourth year of his age, and the tenth of his ministry.
While these blessed influences left their mark, so far as their restraining moral effect in producing a naturally amiable disposition is concerned, it was under the later ministry of the late Rev. Walter Scott that Mrs. Grant came to know herself as a lost and ruined sinner before God, and Jesus Christ as an Almighty and All-sufficient Saviour. It may here be remarked in passing that as a general rule such as were brought to a saving knowledge of the truth as it is in Jesus under Mr. Scott’s ministry were afterwards noted, like those converted under the preaching of the late Rev. Neil Cameron, Glasgow, for the same definite convictions, uncompromising fidelity to principle, consistent practical godliness, and stern conscientious sense of duty, that were such marked characteristics of their respective “spiritual fathers” in Christ.
After her first Communion Mrs. Grant had such a manifestation of Christ as her own personal Saviour vouchsafed to her soul that she thought at the time and for days afterwards that it would never again be possible for her to question her saving interest in Christ. While this experience undoubtedly left its indelible and ineradicable impression, like most young converts, similarly privileged, Mrs. Grant had to learn from prolonged bitter but blessed experience that Satan, operating on the corruptions of the old nature, can becloud the clearest and most vivid supernatural Christian evidences the soul can be conscious of. She was not ignorant of his devices, and even on her death-bed was often tempted with his vile atheistic suggestions that her experiences were all an illusion.
As a Christian, Mrs. Grant was of a gentle and retiring disposition, graciously humble and self-effacing, yet never so much in her element as when tending to the sick and needy, and according a hearty Christian welcome to her hospitable home to the visiting Deputies from the home church. Yet though of a quiet and meek temperament her uncompromising firmness in refusing to cross the threshold of any other denomination than that of the Free Presbyterian Church of Scotland, and that despite the years of intervals between the visits of our Deputies, she knew how bitter persecution, mingled albeit with secret admiration, could be, even in these days of boastful twentieth century enlightenment, broadmindedness and tolerance. Notwithstanding, she adhered to the end unswervingly loyal to the distinctive Scriptural testimony of the noble little church of her love. She was not of the softly effeminate and sentimental type who would confuse and blur Scriptural denominational distinctions, reducing separate denominational positions to a ridiculous farce. In this connection she would heartily approve of the logical and Scriptural attitude of the late godly and faithful Rev. Thomas Matthew, O. S. Church, Kilwinning, whose statement regarding this important point was:—”If it is no sin to worship occasionally with a Church form which we are denominationally separate, it is no sin to worship with that Church always, and if it is no sin to worship with that Church always then the sin lies in being denominationally separate at all, thus causing a needless and un-Scriptural rent in the visible Church of Christ.” Let the backsliders bring forth fruit meet for repentance first!
The Grant family lost two sons in the Great War—John or Ian and Robert or Rollo—hence their commemoration in the name of their home—”Ian-Rollo.” John, the eldest, an obituary notice of whom, by the late Rev. Duncan Mackenzie, appeared in our Magazine for January, 1917, fell in action in France on the 17th August, 1916. He was a deacon, clerk to the deacon’s court and precentor in our Brushgrove-Grafton congregation. Their loss was acutely painful to Mrs. Grant’s motherly heart, but she bore her deep grief with Christian fortitude and patience.
Mrs. Grant met with an accident at her home which confined her to her bed for the next three years and eleven months, until her death. Though a keen and intelligent follower of world events in relation to the onward progress of true Christianity, regularly scanning the newspapers, like the minister who said the world was his parish, and consequently read the papers to see what God and Satan respectively were doing in it, yet immediately she took to bed she ordered all secular literature to be put away from her. Henceforth she confined her reading exclusively to the Bible, Rev. R. Murray McCheyne’s sermons, and an excellent book of sermons by the eminently pious Rev. Dr. Charles Calder Mackintosh of Tain and Dunoon. An outstanding mark of her keen intelligence and rare spiritual discernment was manifested in the readiness and exactitude with which she discovered the hand of the satanic Jesuit in the affairs of Church and State at home and abroad.
While the whole Word of God was made precious to her, she constantly repeated from memory, in Gaelic, while on her bed, the fifty-seventh psalm, while the one-hundred-and-third psalm from the fourteenth verse, the twenty-third psalm, and the fourteenth chapter of John’s Gospel were especially dear to her. The same Spirit who inspired the record of the Old Testament delineation of the ideal model of a graciously virtuous woman (Proverbs xxxi. 10-13), and the New Testament ideal of another aspect of the same gracious womanly character—”the ornament of a meek and quiet spirit.” The Holy Spirit also applied its truths with sanctifying effect to the heart and conscience of the subject of this sketch, as manifested in a practically consistent life, walk and conversation. “Her children arise up, and call her blessed; her husband also and he praiseth her” (Proverbs xxxi. 28). Her only daughter, Miss Margaret Grant, assiduously and admirably nursed her worthy mother to the end.
Shortly after the arrival of the present deputy Mrs. Grant requested that he would give a discourse in Gaelic by her bedside. He accordingly spoke from the 3rd chapter of John, 30th verse: “He must increase, but I must decrease.” When asked at the end if she heard and understood, with an approving smile she immediately responded, “Yes, every word of it.” This was the last discourse Mrs. Grant was ever destined to hear on earth. She went down gradually and gently to the valley of death, and was gathered in as a sheaf of corn fully ripe. The funeral took place to Maclean Cemetery the following day, where the names on most of the tombstones reveal the Scottish Highland origin of the virtuous men and women, whose elevating moral influence on their descendants, on the Clarence, has not yet ceased to be felt.
We would take this opportunity of extending to her worthy husband, her daughter, her two surviving married sons, her step-brothers and step-sisters, as well as the two nephews and a niece whom she brought up, our sincere sympathy, praying that her God would be their God.—J. P. MacQueen.