THE subject of this brief and imperfect sketch was born in the township of Borrraig on the shores of Loch Dunvegan and was the daughter of William MacLeod, a respected elder in the Free Presbyterian congregation of Glendale. She came under the power of the Word of God about the time of the separation in 1893. It is a fact worthy of note that many of those who adhered to the testimony raised in 1893 could date the beginning of their spiritual life from that time, as if the Holy Spirit was setting His seal to it that the movement was of God and not of men. Mrs. Campbell was, for a period, visited with sharp conviction of sin. Her whole life passed in review before her eye, and she could see nothing in it but a continuous series of transgressions of the law of God in thought, word and action, and an ungrateful rejection of God’s glorious remedy. We heard her say that after a while she obtained relief from these sharp convictions and that she thought that she had obtained peace, but that afterwards she discovered that it was only a false peace. The Lord’s time, however, came and she was not allowed to go through life with a false peace, but was permitted to taste that peace with God through the Lord Jesus Christ which flows from justification by faith.
When the enemy of souls was foiled in his efforts to delude her with a false peace he tried hard to rob her of the real peace which she had now obtained. Often she would be cast down and in much “heaviness through manifold temptations,” afraid that she had nothing better than what she had been deluded with at the beginning, but then the Lord would speak comfortably to her through His Word and her bands would be loosed. Thus she was enabled to value the Word of God as the instrument in the hand of the Spirit for bringing comfort to her soul, and would say with David, “The law of thy mouth is better unto me than thousands of gold and silver.” Along with these temptations she had domestic trials. Several of her numerous family were removed by death, some in the prime of life, and these trials weighed heavily on her spirit, but, through grace, she, and her like-minded husband who was a respected elder in our congregation, were enabled to show a sweet resignation to the will of God.
For nearly the last seven years of her life she walked this wilderness without the companion of her married life, but the Lord upheld her. Her bodily strength rapidly declined but her affections were set on things above where Christ is. Over a year before the end her speech became so affected that very little of what she said could be understood, but each time we called to see her we would not be five minutes in the house when she would indicate her wish that the Bible would be brought forward so that worship should be conducted. To some it was a pleasure which they will not readily forget to conduct worship with her. The summons came suddenly and after a few days of semi-consciousness, in which it did not appear that she suffered pain, her redeemed soul took its flight to glory there to be in the presence of God for evermore. To the end she was devotedly nursed by her daughter-in-law who bestowed praiseworthy attention on her.—J.C.