DEPARTED souls are with Christ. They have a glorious and immediate intercourse with Him. They are not merely Christ’s servants but His friends, brethren and companions. Though Christ is in a state of exaltation, reigning in majesty and glory over angels and men and devils, yet their intimate intercourse with Him is not hindered for they are glorified with Him. They have indeed, in this world, a spiritual sight of Christ, and are charmed and allured by Him: “Whom having not seen, ye love; in whom, though now ye see Him not, yet believing, ye rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of glory; receiving the end of your faith even the salvation of your souls,” but in heaven they shall see Him as He is, and shall have an “eternal weight of glory.”
“Oh! Christ He is the fountain, the deep sweet well of love!
The streams on earth I’ve tasted, more deep I’ll drink above!
There to an ocean fulness His mercy doth expand,
And glory, glory dwelleth in Immanuel’s land.”
The object of this short and imperfect sketch is to place on record a little about this worthy woman who “shall be in everlasting remembrance,” Ps. cxii. 6. Mrs. Mackenzie was privileged in her early days to be nurtured under a roof where God was known and where His name was great; both her parents having been of the salt of the earth. Her father adorned the eldership in the good old days when the old Free Church was the joy of all the land. John and Murdo Mackenzie, her brothers, were also elders, and were with those who left the Declaratory Act Church and formed the Free Presbyterian Mission Station at Laide in 1893. They did not live long after the formation of our Church, but their memory is still fragrant in those parts—they finished their course with joy.
Mrs. Mackenzie married late in life, and her husband, Roderick Mackenzie, a tailor to trade, was also a worthy man and helpful to the cause of Christ at Laide. He died at an advanced age in March, 1934.
There is really nothing known of the means the Lord took to enlighten her and bring her to a knowledge of her Saviour, but none doubted her sincerity. She was like those who came under the power of the truth in Thessalonica her faith to Godward was spread abroad, “so that we need not to speak anything.” She was an outstanding witness on the side of the King of Zion, and consequently she was a terror to the vain and frivolous. She would freely rebuke sin out of compassion for lost souls who destroyed themselves. Sin should be so hateful to gracious souls, that as they are careful not to commit it themselves, they should also be careful that it should not be upon others. It should be mentioned that her rebukes were always done seasonably and prudently. The inspired writer says in Proverbs that: “a word fitly spoken is like apples of gold in pictures of silver.”
Mrs. Mackenzie was in possession of a very retentive memory and because of this she could repeat Scripture freely, together with what she heard in the public means of grace. Towards the end when she became partially blind and deaf her memory was a valuable storehouse on which she could fall back. Her love to her Redeemer was manifest to all discerning ones, and abounded more and more in knowledge and in all judgment, Philippians, 1. 9. She loved Christ in His people, and in His Word, and she longed for His uninterrupted fellowship in heaven. No one would be long in her company without knowing that she felt with awful solemnity the reality of an approaching eternity.
She left the Declaratory Act Free Church in 1893 and continued faithful to the testimony then raised. She never thought it censorious to rebuke the inconsistencies of other bodies which depart from the doctrine and discipline of the Reformed Church in Scotland. She would listen with pleasure to such as faithfully defended the truth.
Some time after her husband’s death she left her own home and went to reside with a niece, Mrs. Mackenzie, Laide House, where she was cared for in her declining years. Her end came in September last when she was in her 93rd year. She was confined to bed for a considerable time before her end, and suffered a good deal. It could be said of her, as the late Dr. Kennedy said of “blind Nelly,” “when death came it found in her a body that old age had ripened for the grave, and a soul that grace had ripened for glory.”—A. B.