It is with feelings of sincere regret that we have received the news of the death of Mr. Donald Beaton, Matiere, King Country, New Zealand. Though over eighty-eight years of age, he was so healthy, strong, and active, that it would not have surprised those who knew him if he had lived many more years. His hour, however, had come, for “He hath determined the times before appointed, and the bounds of their habitation” (Acts xvii. 26). Up till the end of his earthly pilgrimage, our late friend was a living witness to the fact that a faithful ministry in a community is a precious blessing, especially when it is made an effectual means of salvation to immortal souls. Donald Beaton left his native district of Shieldaig, Ross-shire, with his young wife and three little daughters, for New Zealand, in 1902, but not before the spiritual and faithful ministry of the late Rev. Donald MacDonald had made an indelible impression on his life, walk, and conversation. Naturally enough, Rev. Donald MacDonald, of Shieldaig, had a place of his own in the heart and estimation of Donald Beaton, so that it afforded him peculiar delight and pleasure to speak of his minister’s life, character, preaching, and sayings. He seemed never to tire of speaking of his spiritual hero and benefactor.
It will recall truly happy memories to some still left in our Church, when we relate that Rev. Donald MacDonald baptized Mr. Beaton’s first child, Rev. J. R. MacKay, M.A., his second, and Rev. Alexander MacRae, Portree, his third child. Seven more children were born in New Zealand, three sons and four daughters. These, with twelve grand-children, were baptized by the present writer, during his visit to New Zealand in December, 1935, as Mr. Beaton would not agree to the local nominally-Protestant ministers baptizing any of his offspring, as their lives proved that they knew nothing about the new birth.
It was at the pressing invitation of a near relative, living in Auckland, New Zealand, that Mr. Beaton decided to emigrate. She, however, though having the same privileges in her native Shieldaig district, developed, religiously, in a totally different direction, with a broad-mindedness that scarcely knew any bounds—a popular broad-mindedness, which is a euphemistic name for sheer indifference to doctrinal truths and vital godliness.
When he reached Auckland he told his friend that he would not accept the situation as it involved unnecessary Sabbath labour. When she angrily told him that he would have to leave that narrow-minded bigotry in Scotland if he wanted to get on in New Zealand, he replied that it was the same God who ruled New Zealand as ruled Scotland, and that His commandments were as binding in the one place as in the other. She made two further attempts to find a situation for him, but with the same result, as Sabbath work of an unnecessary character was involved in each. She then abandoned him to the mercy of an unknown land, but his God did not forsake him. He went on to Wellington, where a fellow-Scotsman employed him, only to be told on Friday (pay-day) that if he would not work “Sunday” (the common pagan name for the Lord’s Day), he would be dismissed. He was told the same the following Friday, but, strangely enough, he was not molested again while there. After that, he applied for a large piece of virgin territory, which had been offered by the Land Settlement Council, to such as would undertake the Herculean task of clearing their prospective farms of dense gigantic virgin bush. What Mr. and Mrs. Beaton experienced of hardships on their way on horseback, through primeval swamps and bush, before they reached their destination, makes truth sound stranger than fiction. Here Mr. Beaton set about felling the primeval forest that covered what is now a fertile farm, and his namesake, our worthy Editor, Rev. D. Beaton, Oban, can bear testimony to the diligence, hard work, and unremitting assiduity that turned acres of barren unproductive wasteland to verdure and fertility—a sure proof that real Christianity has never been an excuse for indolence.
The writer regrets that on his return journey from Australia, when he stayed for days with Mr. Beaton, that he did not ask him the time and place where he had passed from death to life, especially as Mr. Beaton, otherwise reticent regarding these matters, freely spoke of his experience of Law-work and conviction of sin, together with his experience of the liberty wherewith Christ makes His people free, through the application, by His Word and Spirit, of the atoning blood of the cross. He also made delightfully and edifyingly free with narratives of instances of periods of the realized presence of the Lord, thus making up for what was otherwise denied in his isolated circumstances, reminding one of such blessed and precious periods in the life of Jonathan Edwards, when on horseback in the backwoods of America.
Lack of space prevents us giving further details and narratives of our worthy friend, but we must relate that when he heard the writer preaching in the Oddfellows’ Hall in Auckland, he said after the meeting: “I have now the fulfilment of what I prayed to the Most High for from the first day I came to New Zealand in 1902, that He would not take me away till I would hear a Free Presbyterian minister preaching on New Zealand soil.” He had come all the way from Matiere to Auckland to be present, but his prayer was fully realised when on my return journey all his children and grand-children were baptized, as he had prayed might be the case.
He was an uncompromisingly staunch Free Presbyterian, and there was only one thing that made him uneasy with regard to the home Church, that is, funeral services. He said that the late Rev. Donald MacDonald never took a service at the house, in this connection, unless, for some reason, no family worship had been observed that morning. In that case, he took family worship, but no more, with the bereaved family. When I assured him that while newspaper reporters called such worship “funeral services” we meant no more by it than family worship, he felt relieved. His daughter, Mrs. Dixon, has written to say that he gave strict orders that there would be no funeral service at the house or grave at his burial, and she adds, “probably never before was there such a funeral in Matiere, perhaps not in the whole of New Zealand.” It reminds one of the strict orders given by the scholarly God-fearing Scottish historian, Dr. Hay Fleming, regarding his own funeral.
Mr. Beaton always held services for his own household, but since Rev. D. Beaton was in Matiere he had held regular services on Sabbath for his own family, and grand-children, and for any neighbours who liked to come to hear him. For some months he was confined to the house, but his voice was strong to the end, so that he addressed his audience from his chair. He lost one son in the Second World War, so that, like Samuel Rutherford, he could say: “With mercy and with judgment my web of time He wove.” May his mantle fall on his sons and grandchildren. We take this opportunity of extending our sincere sympathy to his widow, his family, and grand-children.—J. P. MacQueen.