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Home » Publications » Free Presbyterian Magazine » 1945 » August 1945 » A Noble Act of Appeasement

A Noble Act of Appeasement

It is said that on one occasion two clans who were at deadly feud assembled to hear Dugald Buchanan preach and that as he spoke to them he stood on a great stone in the centre of a stream which separated the rival parties! This was the river Gaur, and the parties separated by that unbridged water were the tenants of an estate under a native ownership and those living on one of the estates confiscated by the Government, on account of the late Rebellion (1745). According to a recent narrator, Rev. John Sinclair, “Buchanan preached so lovingly and so powerfully to those on each side of the river that the people quite overcome with emotion, are said to have rushed into the stream, and to have embraced one another; and from that day forward peace existed between the two peoples” (MacBean’s Dugald Buchanan, the Sacred Bard of the Scottish Highlands, p. 23). May we not have in this a practical illustration of the Wise Man’s words: “A wrathful man stirreth up strife; but he that is slow to anger appeaseth strife.” At any rate the truth declared by Dugald Buchanan curbed the angry passions of those who met as enemies but parted as friends—”Blessed are the peace-makers for they shall be called the children of God” (Matt. v. 9) so declared He who spake as never man spake. Jacob’s appeasement of Esau was small in comparison to Dugald Buchanan’s appeasement of the angry clansmen in the river Gaur. It is worthy of being put on record as it is so rare an event. Peace at any price may be a betrayal of the truth and deserving of the severest condemnation but peace come to in accordance with the truth as the above is a noble thing and worthy of the highest commendation.

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