4. ANDREW GRAY.
WE are passing only once through this world and our chief business in it ought to be, first, to find Christ, and then to serve Him. Many pass through this world to the end of life’s journey without ever realising what their business in it should be, others spend the most of their years wasting their precious time, but happily for themselves are at last brought to a stand and made, through the saving work of the Holy Spirit, to realise what their chief business ought to be, while a few, like the subject of this sketch, find Christ when they are very young, and have finished a course of God-glorifying service, at an age when the most are serving other masters, leaving behind them a savoury remembrance as men who had a personal knowledge of Him whose “name is as ointment poured forth.”
Andrew Gray was born about the year 1634, and was the son of Sir William Gray, of Crichy. He was one of a family of twenty-two, all of whom reached the age of men and women. We have no record of the method of religious instruction in this numerous family, but of Andrew it could be said as of Timothy of old, “From a child thou hast known the holy Scriptures, which are able to make thee wise unto salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus.” Along with a saving knowledge of these Scriptures he had extraordinary mental powers which enabled him to acquire learning very rapidly so that at an early age he entered the University and made great progress in arts and divinity. He was licensed to preach the gospel, and called to the pastorate of the High Church of Glasgow, or as it is sometimes called, the Outer Kirk, before he was twenty years of age. Such a matter is not allowed by the constitution of the Church of Scotland except in extraordinary cases, which in itself is an indication of the fact that the Presbytery of Glasgow saw in him a youth of great promise.
After his settlement in the High Church his preaching drew great crowds of all classes. Though his learning was great, his preaching seemed suited to the capacity of all classes among his hearers, and though he could enter into the deep things of God as few in his day could, and was enabled to captivate the attention of men of the most profound intellect, yet he carried with him and fed the souls of men of the meanest capacity, so that to all classes he was the messenger of God declaring life and death.
In his preaching he knew nothing of man’s supposed natural goodness, but had such a clear view of man’s lost and ruined condition by the Fall, that in pressing home God’s threatenings upon the consciences of his hearers, he showed such warmth and holy zeal for the glory of God and the salvation of sinners, that, as Mr. James Durham observed, “he many times caused the very hairs of their heads to stand up.” This may be illustrated by the following passage from his sermon on Luke xix. 41, 42, entitled “Christ’s Mournful Visits to Obstinate Sinners,” “O ye who slight the precious offers of Jesus Christ in this blessed gospel, and who still continue slighters of it, are ye not afraid that Christ shall depart from you, and shall also remove His blessed ordinances from you, and ye shall be made to seek Him, and shall not find Him, nor yet know where to seek Him? O slighters, and cursed under-valuers of Jesus Christ, stand in awe to slight Him any more, lest He consume you from heaven. O slighters of Jesus Christ, what shall be the latter end of this? I am persuaded that it shall be bitterness to you at last. What would you answer to God if He were pleased to call you in this very hour? What would you answer to Him for all these dreadful abominations of yours? Would ye be able to answer to these sad challenges of your conscience that ye shall have in that day? O be persuaded, that it is a sad thing to live and die slighters of these blessed offers. If ye will not embrace them now, know, that it is not long when God shall cease to be a reprover unto you, and these things which now belong to your peace shall then be hid from your eyes. Oh, then, embrace precious Christ, and delay not any longer.
His preaching, however, not only wounded but healed. As he knew of no condition of man by nature but a lost and ruined condition, he knew of only one remedy for that condition—a crucified, risen and exalted Redeemer. The awakened sinner he directed to an all-sufficient and all-suitable Saviour; to the afflicted Christian, disconsolate through temptation, inward corruption and desertion, he opened the rich store-house of the Covenant of Grace, and showed how the terms of that Covenant were fulfilled, with the result that all its blessings were sure to those for whom they had been ordained. In this respect he had a wonderful gift of proving to those who were afflicted in their souls, that the things which they looked upon as marks that they were not God’s children, were the very things which troubled renewed souls, and for which a remedy was provided in the Covenant of Grace, thus giving a great measure of relief and encouragement. For the experienced Christian he had strong meat, and such often found in his preaching “a feast of fat things, a feast of wines on the lees, of fat things full of marrow, of wines on the lees well refined.” It is no wonder in the light of these facts, that his sermons were valued by the Lord’s people who were hearing them. One, writing a preface to a collection of his sermons, says: “He was a burning and a shining light, of very uncommon gifts and experiences in Christianity; and so admired and followed by serious Christians, far and near, that any who could write short-hand, were greedy to catch every word which dropped from his lips. It would seem, there was scarcely ever a sermon that this youth preached, at home or abroad, but was thus written, and preserved as a precious relic of him.”
Three years prior to Andrew Gray’s ordination in Glasgow, what is known as the Public Resolutions took place, with the sad effect that the Church in Scotland was divided into two parties, Resolutioners and Protestors. We have no means now of finding out whether or not the subject of this sketch took any public part in the debates between these two parties, but tradition asserts that he debated the matter in private with Mr. James Durham, who had been on the side of the Resolutioners, and that afterwards when he was on his death-bed, Mr. Durham asked him if he still adhered to his former views on the subject. His reply was: “I am of the same mind with what you formerly heard, and do much regret that I have been so sparing in public against these woeful resolutions.” He then went on to speak of their sinfulness and the calamities they would bring in such a way that Mr. Durham never afterwards spoke in defence of them.
After two years as a bright and shining light in the ministry this young man was called to the service of the upper sanctuary. A few days of severe illness, in which he was much afflicted in body but very calm in his mind, the day came which he so much desired. His work was finished and it was his Saviour’s will that he should not stay a moment longer in this world. The Bridegroom came and Andrew Gray entered into the joy of his Lord, leaving behind a widow to mourn her loss.
In writing sketches of men who had been eminent in the Church of Christ one often looks for the most outstanding incidents in their lives, and the part which they played in the history of the Church of Christ, but in the case of this young minister there is nothing left on record to guide us on these points. His sermons are his life. In them we see a life consecrated to the service of Christ having as its outstanding features a holy zeal for the glory of God and a consuming passion for the souls of men, and though he has entered within the veil, through these sermons “he yet speaketh” to us. They are a rich mine containing a treasure by which many were enriched when they were being delivered, and many more through the reading of them, and both the hearers and the readers of them will praise God throughout eternity, for the gift of one about whose life they knew very little except that he lived in this world holding forth Christ crucified as the only remedy for the lost and ruined condition of man, and died young. “We have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the excellency of the power may be of God, and not of us.” One cannot help feeling that for generations back the value has not been placed on these sermons which one would like, for copies of them are very difficult to get now. Thomas Manton said of his sermons that they “are the product of a lively and savoury spirit.” Of him it could be said what MacWard said of Hugh Binning: “His life was his sermons put in print, by which means they, who did forget what he had said in the pulpit; by seeing what he did in his conversation might remember what they had forgot; he lived as he spoke, and spoke as he lived.”