It is not always easy to discover all the circumstances connected with the early years of those whose life has been useful in connection with Christ’s Cause. The writer of this sketch is greatly handicapped, chiefly because twenty years have passed since John Macdonald was taken to his everlasting rest, and he was then “old and full of days,” being ninety-two years, so that material for a full biographical sketch no longer exists. Those of spiritual discernment, and who had known him, are fast passing away. The writer himself has only one vivid recollection of him. It was at a Communion in Glasgow. He was the first called to speak at the “men’s” meeting on Friday. We remember two reasons which he said brought him from Gairloch to Glasgow at that season. The first was to see if he could trace grace in his own soul, and the second was to meet those who feared the Lord. Still, after the lapse of so many years, we find him quoted and spoken of by our Church people, who loved and revered him. So we gather some of the fragments that remain, in order to place them on record in the pages of our Magazine. Matthew Henry says, “There are remains of great and good men, which, like Elijah’s mantle, ought to be gathered up and preserved by the survivors—their writings, their examples—that as their works follow them in the reward of them, they may stay behind in the benefit of them.”
John Macdonald’s birthplace was Craig, an isolated nook at the south seaboard of the Parish of Gairloch. The only inhabited house there now is a Scottish Youth Hostel, which is open for part of the year. This place, though now left to Sabbath-breaking “hikers,” witnessed not a few of God’s wrestling people, and heard the sweet songs of Zion as their grave sweet melody ascended from the homes of the inhabitants. From here John generally found his way to Gairloch in quest of God’s sanctuary on Sabbath, as long as Craig was his home. The distance is about fourteen miles, and eleven of these with no road. He used to say that he was as fresh for his work on Monday morning after walking that distance each way on the Sabbath, as those who sat all day at their fireside. In those days Gairloch was privileged in having the rich ministry of the Rev. Duncan Matheson, which began in the year 1844 and terminated by his death in 1873. This eminent ambassador of Christ in his preaching dwelt a lot on the doctrine of justification, but not to the exclusion of other subjects. “You will be saying that I am the piper of the one tune,” he said one day to his congregation, referring to how often he had the subject of justification, “but this is where my soul feeds.” It was at the feet of a minister of this type that John Macdonald was nurtured. He, invariably, would speak of Mr. Matheson as “my old minister,” (mò sheana mhinistear). He heard Mr. Matheson say, perhaps more than once, in giving out a Psalm to sing in the congregation, “If you cannot sing the Psalms from experience, sing them by way of prayer, that God would give you that experience.” John himself loved to pass on this good advice to his own hearers in after days.
It is difficult now to know how our subject was led to a saving knowledge of Christ. But it seems that he was following the means from his early boyhood. As a boy of fourteen or fifteen, his daughter says, he used to attend Donald Duff’s meetings at Alligin and the north coast of Applecross. Even to old age, he could not speak of Donald Duff and his meetings without emotion. From this account one can only conclude that he was impressed by the Gospel in his teens, if not in his childhood, and the Scriptures made him wise unto salvation, “through faith which is in Christ Jesus.” Throughout his long life, he was a pattern of how the flesh should be crucified, of contempt of the world, of strictness and holiness and close walking with God. He was a fixed, established and grounded believer: “not tossed to and fro, and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the sleight of men, and cunning craftiness, whereby they lie in wait to deceive.” He kept to the principles and practices of the Scriptures, the good old way, the way of the patriarchs and the prophets, and the apostles and witnesses in the old time. He set an example before all as to how the Sabbath should be sanctified. His frequenting of public ordinances was constant. “I would never miss a service or prayer meeting if I could,” he once said to a friend, “in case Christ purposed to meet with me in that one I missed.” Family worship, closet duties, reading the Scriptures, meditation and self-examination were his delight, and in his public exercises it could be discerned that he was with Jesus in these. His light so shined before men. He was singular in piety, of an humble, meek and peaceable temper, and a judicious elder and lay preacher. “John Macdonald gave the clearest evidence throughout his long life of being a faithful, steadfast and sincere follower of the Lord and His truth, and that in a generation which departed from both,” the late Rev. N. Cameron wrote of him, in expressing his sympathy with the Gairloch Kirk Session after he was taken from them.
John was married in 1872, by the Rev. Donald Macdonald, Shieldaig, to Jessie MacInnes, a native of Drumbuie, near Plockton. She was a member in full communion, and proved a true helpmeet to him. She had a poetic gift, and composed elegies and other pieces of poetry, which we saw in manuscript. She predeceased him by a number of years. They had a family of three sons and four daughters. Two of the daughters, namely, Mrs. Robertson, Edinburgh, and Mrs. Munro, Inverness, both sincere followers of the Lamb, have gone to their eternal home. The rest are still spared. In the year 1882, as far as can be ascertained, John, with his wife and those of the family who were born, removed to Sand, Gairloch. Here he remained for the rest of his life, except for the last four years of his life when he took a house in the village of Strath, near the Church. It was on 4th July, 1880, that he was ordained an elder in the Gairloch congregation. The congregation then had the Rev. John Baillie as their minister.
John Macdonald showed himself to be a champion for the truth during the time of the Declaratory Act controversy. The Rev. Neil MacIntyre speaks of him in this connection and says: “He was one of the noble band of elders who met at Achnasheen in 1893, when the Free Church Assembly was sitting in Edinburgh. At that meeting these men, who trembled for the Ark of God, firmly resolved that unless the Assembly would rescind the Declaratory Act, which was passed the previous year into a binding law and constitution of the Church, they would separate themselves from that Church and hold private meetings of their own. We can well understand the relief it must have been to them to see a Church set up and firmly established on the original constitution of the Free Church, free from all the trammels brought into it by the Rainy Party. John Macdonald cast in his lot with the Free Presbyterian Church and firmly adhered to it until he was removed to the Church above,” (Mrs. Robertson’s Biography). The unfaithfulness of some of the ministers of the Church to the stand made for the truth in 1893 was a heart-break to him. When a few of them left to join the present Free Church in 1918, he wrote a letter to a friend from which we give the following quotation: “I do not know what will I say about those of our pastors who left. In my own estimation it is almost past speaking about. But, oh! many a sleepless night it cost me. I am not a prophet nor the son of a prophet, but before they will be with the Frees five years perhaps they will not be so satisfied. I cannot help being sorry after some of them, but on the other hand I do not lose my courage. We still have dear Mr. Macfarlane who was the means of opening to us the door we have, and we have at least a few others who are faithful to our cause. But, oh! it is the time of Jacob’s trouble, but he shall be saved out of it. I will be sometimes thinking about Baruch: it was said to him, ‘Seekest thou great things for thyself? Seek them not . . . but thy life will I give unto thee for a prey in all places whither thou goest.'”
Having been born six years before the Disruption of 1843, and having from his early boyhood taken an interest in the Gospel, he remembered a number of the noted Highland ministers, and could relate interesting “notes” about them. One of his earliest recollections was to have walked barefooted from Craig to Aultbea to one of the first Communions the Free Church of 1843 held there. All their meetings were held in the open at that Communion, for there was no Church then. Some of the ministers of which he used to speak were Dr. Kennedy, Dr. Aird, the Rev. A. MacColl, the Rev. John MacRae (MacRath Mor), and the Rev. Donald Sage, the author of the Memorabilia Domestica, whom he used, for a time, to walk from Fortrose to Resolis to hear. This must have been when our subject was a young man, for Sage died in 1869, and he was unable to preach for a number of years before he died. There were many others of whom he used to speak and quote, not forgetting his own “old minister,” Mr. Matheson. Of the “men” he had a vivid recollection and would relate interesting “notes” of them in addressing meetings and speaking to the question. John was a man of varied experience and great discernment. We heard the late Rev. N. Cameron say that the first meeting he had with John was in the year 1893, and in the course of speaking of the spiritual declension of the day, John said, “There was a time in my life when listening to the ministers, that I would be looking for the unction of the Spirit, but now I will be pleased if they have the form of sound words.”
Here we can relate some of his homely illustrations. Speaking of the love of Christ as exercised in the souls of believers, “I know one,” he said, “who was in love with another, and he loved the house in which that person resided more than any other house. He loved to see the smoke that rose from its chimney, yea, he loved the dog that belonged to that house more than any other dog in the village; and all that because he loved one person in that house. This is the way with those who love Christ. They love His people and cause and all that belongs to Christ, all because they love Himself.” Another of his is: “I often saw a sheep caught in a thorn bush, but I never saw a goat caught.” The meaning is obvious. Another time when speaking of God’s children as poor and needy, he made use of the following illustration: “During the year that was called, ‘the year of the famine,’ two young men were sent from our place to a gentleman’s house in the north with a special message. After delivering their message, the gentleman ordered the footman to take them to the dining room in order to partake of some food. The table was ready for them, and among other things there was a good big bannock (a home-made cake of oatmeal) on the table. When the servants left the room, the one said to the other, ‘No wonder these people are strong, for they have a bannock every day.’ But he said, ‘The Lord’s people don’t get a bannock every day. The Lord is wise, He keeps them poor and needy, giving them constant errands to the footstool of His throne.’ Another day in speaking to the question, he said that the Lord’s people had the desire that their fellows would get grace, and made use of the following illustration: ‘There were a few men in a boat on the sea one day, and the boat capsized. Some men on shore saw what happened and they set out to their rescue. They picked up one man who was so exhausted that he could hardly speak, but he pointed with his finger, saying, ‘Fear eile’ (another). That one was sought and found, then he also said, ‘Fear eile’ (another). He said it was a mark on those who were taken out of the horrible pit and the miry clay themselves, that they would be saying to the Lord, ‘Fear eile, agus fear eile’ (another and another), desiring that one after another would be taken out of the kingdom of darkness.
In course of speaking to the question and addressing meetings, he was interesting and edifying. He had a store of anecdotes to cast a flood of light on the subject in hand, together with his native originality and terse sayings. He once told of a number of men who were discussing some doctrine of Scripture. One of the company was silent and took no part. One asked the man who was silent what was his opinion of the point under discussion. ‘Oh!’ he said, ‘I am just now with John the Baptist, and he is talking to some Moderate ministers.’ ‘And what are they saying to John?’ his interrogator asked. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘they are asking him, ‘Where are you living, John?’ and he answered, ‘In the wilderness.’ ‘Oh!’ the Moderate ministers said, ‘Come with us and we will give you a fine manse and a good stipend.’ ‘No, no,’ said John, ‘I am quite pleased where I am.’ ‘And what kind of clothes have you got?’ the Moderate ministers asked. ‘Camel’s hair and a leathern girdle.’ ‘Oh! put it off,’ they said, ‘and we will give you a black coat.’ ‘No,’ said John, ‘I am quite pleased with what I have.’ ‘What have you got to eat?’ they asked. ‘Locusts and wild honey,’ John answered. ‘Come with us and we will give you better fare.’ ‘No, no,’ said John, ‘I am quite pleased with my fare.’ ‘And what are you preaching in the wilderness, John?’ the Moderate ministers still inquired. ‘O generation of vipers, who hath warned you to flee from the wrath to come,’ John answered. ‘Oh! John, if you don’t stop preaching that kind of doctrine they will take the head off you,’ the Moderate ministers answered and left John there.’
In reading the fifteenth chapter of Luke’s Gospel one day during a service in the Church at Gairloch, he stopped at verse twenty-nine, and slowly repeated the words, ‘Lo, these many years do I serve thee, neither transgressed I at any time thy commandment.’ Then he stopped and exclaimed, ‘Lies, lies!’ and then addressed the elder son thus, ‘You broke every one of your father’s commandments.’ Then he read the words: ‘Yet thou never gavest me a kid.’ He again exclaimed, ‘Lies, lies! Many a kid your father gave you.” “I heard a man pray once,” he said on another occasion, “‘Lord, keep us from making the ephah small and the shekel great.’ There were people living then who could understand that,” he commented and passed on. In addressing professors, he said one day: “Don’t give the world a chance to say, ‘He did this and I would not do it myself,’ and ‘He said that and I would not say it myself.'” Before dismissing the people, he invariably would say, “See now and don’t talk of worldly matters on the way home; if you have nothing to say to edification, keep quiet.” He told of a time at the fishing on the East Coast when a young man, that he and a man who was with him, had left one Sabbath to go to a service which was being held near by. On the way they came in contact with some fishermen, who knew his friend, and they both stood. The fishermen asked his friend about his success at the fishing. His friend answered, “Well, if you meet me to-morrow, I will give all the news you want, but this is the Sabbath, so we will leave the fishing alone.” Knowing human frailties, John added, “I was pleased with the man’s answer, for I might have fallen into worldly conversation myself.”
While on a train journey once, he met one who held the views of the “Sinless-Perfectionists.” That is the view that sin in the believer may be eradicated in this life and that the flesh is annihilated, so that the believer becomes a man of one nature—the Divine Nature. John argued on the basis of the seventh chapter of Romans. He could not, however, convince his opponent, who was “never troubled with indwelling sin,” since he “believed.” John ended in saying to him, “Well, though I am a poor sinner, ‘feeble and sore broken,’ with ‘no soundness in my flesh,’ I prefer my lot to yours.”
When a young man, he was appointed Sustentation Fund collector in his own congregation. He used to tell a story in that connection. It was the Rev. Duncan Matheson, the minister of the congregation, who told him that the Deacons’ Court wished him to collect. It seems he signified his unwillingness to take on this duty, and named some other man. To which Mr. Matheson answered, “No! we will not ask him; he is a very poor giver himself to the funds of the Church.” At this, John himself undertook to collect.
He acted as lay missionary in several of our congregations throughout the Church, as well as in the Gairloch congregation, with great acceptance, not only for the matter which he delivered, but also for his sagacity and wisdom among the people. He was a great, and welcomed, visitor of those in trouble, and also at other times. Walking was no difficulty to him, even in old age. He once arrived at Kerrysdale, in his own congregation. “Where have you come from just now?” he was asked. “From Red Point, and I gave them all a peep, Free Church as well,” he answered. Red Point is about ten miles from Kerrysdale.
On his death-bed he was sometimes, it is said, tempted by Satan, and sometimes triumphing over him in Christ Jesus. He spoke of three kinds of hypocrites. The “black,” which the world itself would know; the “spotted,” which the Church would know; and the “white,” which the Lord only would know. He was an example in patience and afraid lest there should be in his heart the least risings against God’s dispensation. He at times would pray to the Lord to take him to Himself, but perhaps immediately he would say, “Lord, let me be content to wait for thine own time.” His end came on June 23rd, 1929, being then, as already indicated, 92 years; leaving behind him a sweet savour and an epistle of commendation upon the hearts of those who knew him. Though he is dead, he died in the Lord. Here I must express my indebtedness to the friends who supplied me with matter to enable me to write the above.—A. B.