To die in the Lord is the blessed privilege of all God’s dear people. They are members of Christ’s mystical body, and so they are said to “sleep in Jesus.” This is the hope that we cherish concerning this aged Christian woman, who was removed from our midst on the 29th day of October, 1953, while in her 93rd year of her age.
Our subject was born at South Erradale, within the bounds of the Gairloch congregation. She underwent a saving change while in her early twenties. In the days of her trial, and under severe conviction of sin, the words of Revelation iii. 20, “Behold I stand at the door and knock: if any man hear my voice, and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with me,” were keeping her, as she would say, “from falling into despair.” She thought, after all, there was hope for her when that Scripture said: “If any man hear my voice,” for in her own estimation she was a very great sinner. She felt that “any man,” however vile and self-destroyed, could look to the blessed Saviour and be saved, for he came to seek and to save the lost, as she felt herself to be. She ever afterwards loved to hear a sermon based on this portion. By the grace of God she did hear His “voice” and “opened the door” in the very height of her soul trial, and it happened in the public means of grace, “with a little shawl,” as she told Miss Finlayson, “covering my head, and even my face. I felt as if no one was present but myself and my God.” This was due to how she was impressed by the truth declared by the preacher. What passage or passages of Scripture through which the Lord thus made Himself known to her and gave her such comfort we are not able to say: our late informant could not recall them. This happened some years before the Free Presbyterian Church was formed.
When the stand was made in 1893 by the Revs. D. Macfarlane and D. Macdonald, and those who followed them, for the sake of the truth of God and for the preserving intact of the Creed and Constitution of the Free Church of Scotland, she was among the first to cast in her
lot with them. For this stand she had to endure the “trial of cruel mockings,” of which she could speak to the end of her pilgrimage. But her duty was clear, and her conscience free, and she cared little what man would say or do. Of the crop of Godly men and women who adorned their profession, and the Free Presbyterian congregation of Gairloch when it was first formed into separate existence, she had a vivid recollection. She had a retentive memory and could go into every detail when she told those interesting reminiscences of the past.
After a time she left her native parish to work for her living, and was a domestic servant in different places. Finally she settled at Garve, where she remained for 18 years, like Paul, in her “own hired house.” While at Garve she became connected with the Free Presbyterian congregation of Dingwall. She attended the services there as often as she could, sometimes by going with friends for the week-end or by getting a lift in a car, if there happened to be someone in the vicinity who went to the Church there. During her stay at Garve she had the companionship of the late Miss Ellen Finlayson, already referred to. Their houses were close together, and they were bosom friends in the Lord. Miss Finlayson was a very bright and lively type of Christian, while Miss Macpherson was more of the doleful type and subject to seasons of depression. So Miss Finlayson would sometimes have to act the part of a comforter to her friend, and for that she was in every way fitted, for besides the knowledge she had of Scripture doctrine, she had a store of anecdotes and sayings of the ministers and “men” of the past, and often proved to be a Barnabas—the son of consolation—to Chirsty, as she was familiarly called. Though, as was stated, she underwent a saving change when comparatively young, she never got strength to approach a Kirk Session with a view to make a public profession till late in life. We had it from Miss Finlayson that it was a sermon preached at Beauly by the Rev. D. A. Macfarlane, M.A., from the words of Isaiah lxi. 1-3, that gave her encouragement to make it her duty to sit at the Lord’s Table. The text appealed to her and things were brought out that met her case.
She came to the Dingwall Kirk Session some time after and was received as a member in full communion. But no sooner had she got her token than the Devil was on her track to torment and tempt her. The cruel “liar” succeeded in keeping her from the Lord’s Table on this occasion, and she fell into great straits in her spirit. How she was delivered from this depth we did not hear, but that she got deliverance we know, and ever after commemorated the death of her Lord at His table. Of the temptations of the Devil the Lord’s people get their share and turn, and Chirsty had an ample share of them during her life, even to the very end. But those trials and temptations which God was pleased to permit in her case are in Scripture compared to the winnowing of wheat, and to the refining of gold. The Devil may shake but only to purge away the chaff, and the gold when melted loses nothing of its substance, but the dross. We believe that
our dear friend got a sanctified use of all her trials. She bore the fruit of one deeply taught of the Holy Spirit. She was a pattern of strictness and holiness, of patience, of contentment with her lot in the world, and of close walking with God. She was also a constant wrestler at the throne of grace, and in this a great support to any congregation. She humbly made known to a close friend that she no sooner at times asked for the Lord’s mind on anything than she got it: “The secret of the Lord is with them that fear Him; and He will show them His covenant.”
It was in Strath, Gairloch, that Miss Macpherson ended her pilgrimage. In the good providence of the Lord a relative of her own left her a house. Here she resided exactly 13 years to the day her mortal remains were committed to the dust. For this house she ever praised the Lord because it afforded her the opportunity of attending the House of God “without the feeling of being a trouble to others,” as she would say. She had the use of all her faculties and senses unimpaired to the end, and she was not for long unable to attend the House of God. In her last illness she was only confined to bed but a few days, and her end came rather suddenly as a few hours before we had worship at her bedside, and she was almost in her usual to us, but she was complaining of pain about the chest. She, like another, “looked for a city which has foundations whose builder and maker is God” and found it.—A. B.