Early on New Year’s morning, 1953, the chariot of heaven called at the home of our friend in his ninetieth year to bring him to the rest which remains to the people of God, and where years and time shall be no more. While yet a very young man, Angus Morrison manifested a more than common interest in the gospel and in the affairs of Christ’s Kingdom here below. Many were of the opinion that he should witness publicly on the Lord’s side, but he refrained from doing so for a considerable time afterwards. As he himself used to relate, God’s time had not yet come, but when it did, it was impossible to keep back from commemorating the dying love of Christ any longer.
Angus Morrison had the rare privilege of listening to faithful preachers who warned men and women against eating and drinking unworthily, “not discerning the Lord’s body.” When the Rev. Alexander MacLeod was settled in Uig in 1824, there were eight or nine hundred communicants in the congregation. In view, however, of the spiritual ignorance of the people, Mr. MacLeod decided not to administer the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper during the first year of his ministry, and when the ordinance was at length observed the communicants had dwindled down to six. Under Mr. MacLeod’s ministry the parish of Uig became as a garden of the Lord. “The Rev. John MacRae (MacRath Mor) testified that the finest moral spectacle he had ever witnessed during his whole career was that of the Uig congregation under the pastorate of the Rev. Alex. MacLeod” (Memoir of Rev. A. MacLeod). In 1875 on account of the Voluntaryism which was now becoming rampant in the Free Church, over 1,000 people in the parish of Uig left the Free Church and joined the Established Church which had shortly before then rescinded the Patronage Act. The elders and deacons of the Free Church in Uig in their formal resignation state inter alia: “In leaving the Free Church we firmly maintain that we stand by the Free Church principles of 1843, but repudiate and disown the Voluntary teaching which has been the main reason for this deliberate action in returning to the Established Church.” The great majority of the converts and members of the Rev. Alex. MacLeod were among those who carried with them the ark of the testimony into the parish church of Balnakill. It was thus in an atmosphere of piety unfeigned and devotion to the crown rights of the Lord Jesus Christ that Angus Morrison was reared.
Continuing a member in full communion in the Balnakill Parish Church for a good number of years, Mr. Morrison was elected to the eldership. This office he declined to accept in view of the proposed union between the Church of Scotland and the United Free Church. Angus was a highly intelligent man and well read in the contentings of the Church of Scotland. One of his favourite books over which he often poured was the late Dr. Begg’s book in defence of the “Establishment Principal.” Its contents he mastered, and with that racy skill of delivery which was characteristic of him, he was not slow to make known the principles at stake in connection with the Union. Never could the Balnakill congregation which in 1875 made a stand against Voluntaryism unite with the U.F. Church which was Voluntary, Arminian and rotten to the core with Higher Criticism. Accordingly when the Union took place in 1928, the Balnakill congregation, except for a small remnant, joined the Free Presbyterian Church of Scotland. It was not until 1892 that Voluntaryism and Arminianism became the new creed of the Free Church. The Rev. Donald MacFarlane by his protest in 1893 conserved the creed of the Holy Scriptures—both Voluntaryism and Arminianism being contrary to the Word of God and to all the confessions of the Reformed Churches in Scotland, England and the Continent of Europe.
No sooner was the stand made by the Balnakill congregation in refusing to enter the 1928 Union and in joining the Free Presbyterian Church than they discovered in measure the truth of Revelation xii 17: “And the dragon was wroth with the woman, and went to make war with the remnant of her seed, which keep the commandments of God, and have the testimony of Jesus Christ.” Angus Morrison received letters fiercely criticising the Church he had now joined. These he did not make public lest the mind of the congregation would be influenced through these tactics of Satan.
Now, fully persuaded that he was in that branch of Christ’s visible Church which adheres most closely to the Bible and Reformation principles, Angus Morrison accepted the eldership, which office he faithfully and diligently adorned to the end. For many years he was a member of Synod and Presbytery. In all the trials which our beloved Church met with in recent years, not once did we find him wavering. Blessed are they who endure unto the end. He lost his wife in early life, and he was thus left with the concern of a young family. On more than one occasion he told the writer how the Lord manifested to him beforehand that he was to pass under the rod of affliction. A year previous to this sore bereavement he awoke early one morning with the words, “Many are the afflictions of the righteous; but the Lord delivereth them out of them all” (Psalms xxxiv. 19). For months he pondered over those afflictions which meet the just in the valley of Baca, but never thought of the removal of his beloved partner, until one day while working on his croft, God through His word spoke to him: “Beloved, think it not strange concerning the fiery trial which is to try you, as though some strange thing happened unto you” (I Peter iv. 12).
In the absence of the minister Angus conducted the services. He was most orderly in his handling of God’s Word, and the people listened to him with interest. He read much and made use of the same. With every opportunity he warned the people against coming judgments, when the love of many for the truth of the Gospel would wax cold. He was grieved at heart to see the falling away of the generation from the doctrines of the Confession of Faith which were dear to him, being the doctrines of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, to the popular Moody and Sankey evangelism which is not from the Holy Spirit of Truth but from Satan as an angel of light. He was a beautiful Gaelic precentor and retained his voice almost to the end.
We desire to extend our sincere sympathy to his family and relatives both at home and abroad, but especially to the one who so faithfully and lovingly attended him in his declining years. May the Lord who is rich in mercy to all that call upon Him, enrich them one and all with the righteousness of Christ, that it, too, may be well with them at life’s journey’s end.—J. N. MacD.