THIS eminent Christian lady passed away on February sixth of this year at the age of eight-six after a lingering illness which confined her to bed for many years.
Mrs. Macdonald was born at Kyles, North Uist. At the age of eighteen she married Mr. Malcolm Macdonald and they settled at the Mill, Dusary. Her late husband, of whom a notice was inserted in this Magazine some years ago, was a much respected elder in the Free Presbyterian Church at Bayhead. The family consisted of seven sons and four daughters, several of whom gave evidence that they were born again. Two sons and two daughters live to mourn their affectionate mother.
In eighteen-ninety-three she and her husband, with many others, at the dictates of conscience, severed their Church connection; since they refused to acknowledge that foundational truths deeply imbedded in the Word of God and essential to the spiritual life of a Christian community, should be cut and carved to suit the principles of high expediency. They parted with that Church not because they loved it less but because they loved the Truth more.
Mrs. Macdonald was born of godly parents and, like Timothy, she evidently embraced the Redeemer at an early age. Several years afterwards she made a public profession of her faith. She was not given to speak of her own spiritual experiences but one could gather that she was too often inclined to make her feelings an index of her spiritual condition. An eminent divine observes, “that the more spiritual any man is the more he sees of his unspiritualness in his spiritual duties.” An obscure view of this fact left Mrs. Macdonald too often in the depths of despondency but the comfort was all the sweeter when it came. In the words of the Lochcarron divine’s “Happy Man,” “She wore the plain garment of humility . . . often walked in the valley of self-abasement, and sometimes climbed the mountains of heavenly mindedness.”
Mrs. Macdonald’s circumstances enabled her to show her faith by her works in a very practical way, for the miller’s house was a granary for the poor and needy, while those who knew her best could testify that “she opened her mouth with wisdom and in her tongue was the law of kindness.” During the last few days of her life she yearned to be away “to the mountains of myrrh and the hills of frankincense.”
A large concourse of people gathered at the house on the day of the funeral to tender the last offices to one they knew so well and respected so much. Our sympathy goes out to the surviving members of her family and various relatives, especially her daughter Annie, who nursed her mother with Christian love and tenderness for eight years. May they, who were so familiar with the Christian faith and conduct of their godly relative, be divinely constrained to adopt the language of another—”Thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God.”—W. B. N.