TO pen obituary notices of the Lord’s people is a very difficult matter, for one is thus made painfully conscious of one’s own inability to do justice to their memory. It is also painful from the point of view that one is made, more fully, to realise that they are no longer with us and that their place is empty in the Church militant. It is with such feelings that an endeavour is made to write a short notice of the late Mrs. Porteous, Vatten, Isle of Skye.
This Christian lady, who passed away at a very advanced age, on 9th September, 1936, was known far and wide throughout our Church, and when the news that she had gone the way of all flesh went abroad, it evoked feelings of sincere sorrow. She was born in the parish of Durness, Sutherlandshire, and came to Skye when very young. Her parents endeavoured to bring her up in the fear and admonition of the Lord, and of her mother, who was an eminently pious woman, she spoke highly to the last. It was, however, under the preaching of the Rev. Alexander MacColl, while minister of Duirinish, Skye, that she got her first impressions of vital religion.
The writer is not in a position to say what particular portion of God’s Word brought conviction of sin, but she herself used to tell that, under conviction of sin, she was brought back to her earliest childhood, and to the time when she was first conscious of having wilfully sinned. So clear was the sight she got of that incident that she could remember, not only the place where she had been, but the very clothes she was wearing when that sin was committed, a fact which ought to cause men and women to lay to heart that the sins which for the time being they think they have forgotten, will, if unforgiven, stand up clearly before their eyes, when God will put His finger on their consciences at the Great White Throne. The time of her deliverance came in God’s own time and when she first made a public profession, so much was the truth speaking to her, and such was her joy that the road seemed very short going to, and coming from the public means of grace. The Lord’s people, however, are not allowed to go smoothly through this world. Their experience is that, “they mount up to the heaven, they go down again to the depths: their soul is melted because of trouble” (Psalm cvii. 26). This was the experience of Mrs. Porteous as the following incident will show. Being under a severe temptation on one occasion, and finding her heart full of blasphemy she was coming to the conclusion that she had never undergone a real change, when one of our ministers called at her house on his way to Struan, in the parish of Bracadale, to hold a service. She went to the service and the minister’s text was, “Reproach hath broken my heart, and I am full of heaviness” (Psalm lxxix. 20). The Spirit of the Lord was present that night and her bonds were loosed, so that she had a very happy time on her way home, on the lonely road between Struan and Vatten.
One who knew her but casually would be ready to conclude that she was pretty much a stranger to the “ups” and “downs” of the Lord’s people, on account of how bright she seemed to be at all times, but as was hinted already this was far from being the case. She acted on the principle of keeping the bright side to the world and even to many of the Lord’s people, and the dark side to God, rightly maintaining that it was not to the credit of anyone, or to the credit of religion, to parade the dark side before the world, a lesson which many, even of the Lord’s people, would do well to learn. Between fifty and sixty years ago she was married to the late Mr. William Ford Porteous, a south country gentleman, who died in 1911, and of whom an obituary notice appeared in the November issue of the Free Presbyterian Magazine for that year. Their house was open to the Lord’s people at all times, but especially at communion times. Practically every one of our ministers have been, during communion seasons under the hospitable roof of Vatten House, where they had a practical demonstration of that hospitality which was given to the Apostles by one of old when the Lord opened her heart to “attend unto the things which were spoken of Paul.” Nothing gave her greater pleasure than to look after the comforts of those whom she believed to be the Lord’s people, and many a happy company gathered there from year to year, ever since the communion was first kept in Vatten. The vast majority of them are now in the Church triumphant. Her generosity, however, was not confined to those who gathered in her own house. Many a needy creature could say of her as Paul says of Phoebe, “She hath been a succourer of many, and of myself also,” but in these matters she never allowed her left hand to know what her right hand did.
From her earliest years she seems to have imbibed right views of the contentions of the Disruption Worthies, and we have heard her tell some anecdotes, related to her childhood days, which bear this out very clearly. Being a very intelligent person, and well-read, she had a thorough grasp of the position of the Free Church in 1843, and could give scriptural reasons why she adhered to its principles. When the infamous Declaratory Act of 1892 became law it was not an easy matter to blind the eyes of such a one with the miserable sophistries by which the Declaratory Act was explained away by the so-called Constitutional Party, and when all hope of repealing it was gone, she and her like-minded husband identified themselves with the Free Presbyterian Church, which is in reality the Free Church of Scotland, purged of all the excrescences of the flesh which an innovating majority brought into her, and a pseudo-Constitutional Party remained under. To the stand then made she remained faithful to the last, and would give no place to the many plausible reasons which were advanced by some in order to cause the Free Presbyterian Church to forsake her testimony on the side of Christ. Many an incident she told of the early struggles of the Free Presbyterian congregation in the district through lack of pulpit supply, and alas! on account of the spirit of persecution. Knowing something of the struggles on account of the last mentioned reason we are not at all surprised at the unity and steadfastness which was a marked characteristic of the generation of Free Presbyterians to which Mrs. Porteous belonged, a generation which followed men only as far as these men followed Christ. This was a very prominent trait in Mrs. Porteous’ character and manifested itself conspicuously to the last.
Although advanced in years the end came rather suddenly. For some years back she had been staying with her daughter, Mrs. Mackenzie, Portree, but was coming every summer to Vatten House where she would remain till after the communion, which is on the fourth Sabbath of August. At the last communion there she remained as usual but said to some of us that this would be her last communion in Vatten. On Sabbath evening on her way to Church she referred to a sermon she heard the previous Friday on the Ladder which Jacob saw at Bethel, and said that she would like to hear more about the “Ladder.” That evening she took a weak turn in church and had to be taken home but with characteristic love to the courts of God’s House she would not allow anyone to say that going to church had any connection with her illness. On Monday she seemed to be herself again, and showed by her conversation that the cause of Christ was very near her heart.
On the 9th September she appeared to be in her usual and was out for a drive, but shortly before midnight the Messenger came, and in a short while the tabernacle was taken down and the soul of Mrs. Porteous was gone, we believe, to be forever with the Lord. The following Friday her body was laid to rest beside that of her husband in Caroy Churchyard, and the large concourse of people which gathered to her funeral from many parts of Skye manifested the universal respect in which she was held by all classes. The cause of Christ is poorer by her removal, and some of us feel much weaker through being deprived of her pleadings at a throne of grace.
Her place is empty among us and we shall not see her till the heavens be no more. We miss her presence and her prayers, but would seek to rejoice in the belief that our loss is her great gain. We would take this opportunity of extending our sincere sympathy to her sons and daughters and her grand-children, and our prayer is that God would give them to know in their own experience that faith which would enable them to endure “as seeing Him who is invisible.”—John Colquhoun.