By the late REV. ANGUS MACGILLIVRAY of Dairsie.
THE justly-renowned Rev. Dr. Kennedy of Dingwall said about the Rev. Dr. C. C. MacIntosh of Tain and Dumoon that he was the most outstanding Christian for true piety and practical godliness he had the privilege of meeting on life’s journey. The following description of the Rev. C. C. MacIntosh’s worthy father, from the pen of the late Rev. Angus MacGillivray of Dairsie will, no doubt, appeal to the readers of the magazine:—
Rev. Dr. Angus MacIntosh was born in the parish of Moy in Inverness-shire. He was the child of godly parents, and he told me an incident in his early history which made an everlasting impression on him. When he was sixteen years old his father assembled a few Christian friends, and after spending a part of the day in devotional exercises he addressed his son as follows:—”When you were an infant I cast you on God’s covenant, and took its seal for you. You have now come to years when you are able to think and act for yourself, and I now remind you that God’s vows are on you; that, as a baptized person, you have a special interest in the covenant, and that you are specially bound to give yourself to Christ, to receive Him as your own Saviour, and live to His glory.” Dr. MacIntosh told me that the impression made on him that day was never wholly effaced. Having been called to study for the ministry, he attended the University at King’s College, Aberdeen, and whilst there he enjoyed the friendship of Sir James Mackintosh and Robert Hall. His first charge was the Gaelic Church in Glasgow, and at this early stage of it his ministry was eminently blessed. Mr. Neil MacBride, under whose ministry the awakening took place in Arran, was at that time his constant and earnest hearer. After being four years in Glasgow, he was transferred to Tain, in Ross-shire, and from that time till his death he was the great preacher of the North. There were at that time many eminent Christians in Ross and Sutherland, and they at once recognised in Mr. MacIntosh the “master in Israel.” After Hugh MacKenzie had heard him a few times, his minister Mr. Rainy, asked him what he thought of the young man who had come to Tain. His answer was—”The great Ross-shire ministers now gone had each his own characteristic excellency. Mr. MacPhail’s preaching was experimental, Mr. Fraser was the systematic divine, and Mr. Porteous was the expounder of Scripture, and my belief is that Mr. MacIntosh combines the excellences of all the three.”
Let me attempt to describe him as I have seen him on a ‘Communion Sabbath at the tent. When it was known that he was to assist thousands came from great distances, and it almost always happened that he presided on the Lord’s Day, the tables being, of course, in the open air. He was a man six feet high; his dark brown eye was keen and piercing, and all his movements in the pulpit were beautifully graceful and suited to the subject. It was not art—it was nature, and yet you could not detect an awkward movement or what could be called a peculiarity. He enters the tent, and after praise he offers up a short, solemn, moving prayer. You feel that, with the deepest reverence, the man is speaking to God; every petition is like a bolt shot up to Heaven. He reads his text, and for a time he is calm, with little action, and his deep-toned, melodious voice is, without the least effort on his part, heard by the most distant of eight or ten thousand people. He begins by expounding his text; his exposition is lucid and striking; and he shows you the great doctrines revealed in the text, and the great lessons taught in it. He has thus laid a deep foundation for what is to follow; he has brought out the mind and will of God in the text—the whole addressed to the understanding; and now his application commences, his eye kindles, and his voice, though not the least strained, is louder. Your attention is now thoroughly riveted; your feeling is, that man thoroughly believes what he says. His very countenance shows this. At one time you see deep awful compassion—a cloud on his countenance; at another the sun breaks through the clouds, and there is a beautiful smile. The sermon is finished, and he comes to the fencing, and after a few solemn truths addressed to the worldly professor, he comes to deal with God’s children, calling them to their Master’s table. He speaks, indeed, to those of the highest attainments, showing that he knows their experience, but he is especially careful to deal tenderly with the “bruised reed and the smoking flax.”
He has great dramatic power; in his fine pure Gaelic he puts questions, and makes his hearers, so to speak, answer them, varying the tone of his voice as the subject varies. He follows the perplexed enquirer through all his wanderings; he comes down to the first breathings of the divine life in the soul, and he encourages the weakest to come, with all his darkness and perplexity, to meet Christ at His Table. Experienced Christians, in comparing him with other ministers, were wont to say—‘No doubt they preach the Gospel, and preach it powerfully, but Dr. MacIntosh is the tender nurse—he knows how to handle the child.’ I recollect a striking example of this. He was to preach Gaelic on the Lord’s Day at a Communion in his neighbourhood. On Saturday a very worthy but, in this case, not very judicious man preached a hard scourging sermon from the words ‘He that eateth and drinketh unworthily, eateth and drinketh judgment to himself.’ There can be no doubt that he pushed the thing too far, for the feeling among good people assembled from all quarters was that if they were to be guided by what they had heard they could not communicate next day.
Dr. MacIntosh presided on Sabbath; he had not heard the Saturday sermon, but if I ever saw the meekness and tenderness of Christ I saw it on that day’s fencing, and the result was, as many of the people told me, one of the most comfortable sacraments they had enjoyed for years. In fact he had no sympathy with a system one sometimes met with—I mean the making a righteousness of keeping away from the Communion Table. I was present on one occasion when the communicants were rather stiff in coming to the table. He stood up in the tent and said—‘I never could reckon it an evidence of grace to be slow in coming to the Lord’s Table. Whatever be the true believer’s doubts and fears and discouragements he will at once come with them all to the Lord’s Table rather than displease or dishonour the Lord of the Table.’ It was like a shock of electricity—the table was filled in half-a-minute. His table services were generally short, there was no sermonizing in them; they were addressed directly to the communicants, or rather to the individual believer, and their object always was to bring Christ and the believer face to face, and, if I may so speak, to carry on the fellowship between them. As the number of tables was often great there was rarely an evening sermon.
Dr. MacIntosh generally concluded with an address. And it was here that he put forth his whole power and specially shone. These addresses were about the most striking things I ever listened to. After saying a few pithy words to the communicants as to their privileges and duties, he turned to the thousands of the young and thoughtless before him, and he spoke to them with a power and an unction and an authority which made the most careless listen. It was as if he said I am God’s servant, and I have a message from God to you. In telling sinners of their danger he spoke as one who saw it vividly; his fine eye was frequently filled with tears, and his voice and manner made us feel as if thunder were rolling over our head. This was followed up by holding forth Christ as the living, present, all-gracious Saviour, and by the most melting appeals to the worst and the vilest to come to him even now, with all their sins, that they might even now be saved. He seemed unwilling to part with them till they fled for refuge to Christ, and, with a thorough knowledge of their own language and phrases, he plied them with illustrations and arguments. He appeared to be realizing the unseen world—indeed, he said to me on one occasion that these were at times his happiest hours on earth. ‘I have,’ said he, “been frequently breathing the air of Heaven whilst proclaiming to sinners Christ’s fullness and love, and beseeching the worst of them to come to Him for salvation.”
His ministry was eminently blessed in his own parish, but in no part of the work did his Master more own him than he did in these addresses on Communion Sabbaths. Giving me some directions at the commencement of my ministry, one of them was—“Never dismiss the people on the evening of a Communion Sabbath without addressing the careless and godless, preaching Christ to them, and beseeching the chief of sinners to flee to Him for refuge. Their minds are then in a peculiar state, the scene they have witnessed has for the time softened and impressed them, and Christ’s ambassador should take advantage of this.” And he then told me that for many years after he came to Ross-shire he had frequent opportunities of giving such addresses to immense congregations, that almost invariably after such seasons persons from other parishes—sometimes as many as ten or twelve—came to consult him about their souls, and that he generally found it was the evening address that made the impression. About two years before his death, he had a dangerous attack of illness, and he himself and others thought it was the last messenger.
I had the privilege of being constantly at his bedside, and the scene was unspeakably solemn and instructive. An old friend and brother minister, Mr. Forbes of Tarbet, came to see him, and I heard the following conversation pass between them:—“How are you, sir?” “I am very weak—as weak as an infant.” “I trust that though the outward man decayeth, the inward man is renewed day by day?” “I have no doubt about that; I know Whom I have believed, and I am persuaded that He is able to keep that which I have committed to Him against that day.” Mr. Forbes said with tears, and yet with a smile—“There is many a poor Christian in Ross-shire who would cheerfully take your sick-bed to be able to speak as you do.” He answered with deep solemnity—“I should now be the most miserable wretch on earth unless I could speak as I have done.” Whilst some of us were turning him in bed he thanked us, and expressed regret for the trouble he was giving us, and then he said—“My kind friends would, if they could, construct a bridge to take me over Jordan; but oh, with what contempt I can look at everything else when I but get a glimpse of the finished work of Christ.” After there was some hope of recovery another old minister, a cousin of his own, said, “I do trust God will still restore you to us in answer to the many prayers of His people.” His answer was:—“I have no will in the matter. There have been seasons in my life when I have had a sinful impatience to die, and I have at other times had a sinful unwillingness to die, but He has enabled me now to put a blank bill into His hand.”
God did restore him, and he preached again for about two years; and he had promised to engage once more, God willing, in the work he loved, to preach at a neighbouring sacrament, and to preach at the tent. But his work was done; ere the time arrived the hand of death had struck him, and amid sorrow deeper and more widespread than ever I saw in the North for any other death the grave closed on Dr. Angus MacIntosh of Tain.