THIS good man was born at Daliburgh, South Uist. His mother died when he was very young and he was brought up with an uncle. When he was old enough to work he was sent to Greenock to learn a trade—that of a wheelwright. He had many stories to tell of those early days when he came to the town as a raw rustic from a remote island in the Outer Hebrides, with very little English to make his way. But of the English language he got a good hold by self-teaching and reading so that he became a very acceptable public speaker at Church services in after years.
After spending six years learning his trade in Greenock, he removed to Glasgow. It was in Glasgow, and in connection with the St. Jude’s Free Presbyterian Congregation, that he spent the most of his life. In this city he was employed during his whole time in the workshops of the Caledonian Railway, latterly the L.M.S. Railway. For wheelwrights there was a good deal of work in his days—the days of horsedrawn vehicles. In his young days, when he first came to the South, companions led him aside, and he associated himself with those who frequented the “Highland Gatherings,” as he used to call these, and being a good singer he was much in demand for singing Gaelic songs. Some will remember how he used to speak on the Friday of communions with sorrow for frequenting these gatherings in the days of his youth. He would then take the opportunity to warn the young people lest they also would be led into these bye-paths of Satan. He had no question about these being the works of darkness and calculated to blind the mind “lest the light of the glorious gospel of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine unto them.”
The day came, however, when Donald turned his back for ever on the frivolities of this world and the talents that Satan and the world had the use of for a time, he now used in the service of Christ. This happened when he was about 27 years of age. We are not in a position to say what way the Lord used to bring our friend “to himself” (Luke xv. 17), but it was God’s truth that touched his heart, as he used to relate in giving marks of the grace of God in the soul when speaking to the “question” on the Friday of communions. To begin with, he was connected with the present Free Church, and was a member in full communion with it. For how long we cannot say. Latterly he got dissatisfied with certain practices in the Free Church, and also with utterances which he used to hear from her pulpits, which he could relate to the end, and he severed his connection with that Church in the year 1904, and joined the congregation of St. Jude’s Free Presbyterian Church, Glasgow, where he became a member in full communion, and later a very useful elder. To the position of the Free Presbyterian Church he kept faithful, by the grace of God, throughout the ups and downs of life, till the Lord took him, we believe, to be with Himself. To the fathers of the Church he had the greatest respect for the stand they made in 1893, when the whole doctrine of the Westminster Confession of Faith, for which the Free Church of 1843 stood, was cast overboard by the passing of the infamous Declaratory Act of 1892. As time went on, with the rapid declension in all the other Churches in Scotland, it came more clear to him the need there was of the separate stand for the truth made by and continued by the Free Presbyterian Church. To this he would bear public testimony without fear or shame.
He was blessed with a retentive memory, and he could quote freely from the sermons of the late Rev. Neil Cameron, under whose preaching he sat for 28 years, in the Church of St. Jude’s. He was a great reader and was familiar with the lives of the good men and women of the past, and especially the Reformers and Covenants. He was a great visitor of the sick and aged in the city of Glasgow. Besides keeping worship with these, he had a host of good edifying stories to draw on and quotations from the sermons he had heard the previous Sabbath, and at other times, so that his visitation of the sick at home and in hospitals was made very profitable, and looked forward to. In his day many used to go from the Highlands and Islands as patients to the large infirmaries in Glasgow, and in visiting these places he got to know many people from different parts, and this made him widely known among Highland people, not only of the Church, but of other Churches as well. In his spare time he was in the habit of collecting good evangelical books that could only be got in second-hand places; these he would distribute to patients in hospitals and to others, together with useful tracts and booklets. In this sort of work he never spared himself, and one could see that he took great delight in it. As a visitor he excelled many and got to know practically all who attended St. Jude’s Church. If he saw a stranger and got in contact with him he always had a word of welcome for him and encouraged him to come back to hear the doctrine that he loved. This made the late Rev. N. Cameron characterise him in our hearing as “the most useful elder I ever had: if I want to know anything about anyone I have only to ask Donald and he is sure to know.” Such was his knowledge of that large congregation.
He was of a very entertaining disposition with his host of anecdotes and reminiscences of the crop of godly men and women who were in the congregation of St. Jude’s at the beginning of its history. Indeed, a very interesting part of the history of that congregation, and of the people who attended the ministry of the first minister there, is now lost by his removal. Another distinguishing feature of his was his attractiveness to young people, with whom he was a general favourite. He had a way with him that few possessed to get round them and give a good advice or reprove anything that he saw amiss, which would as a rule be taken in good part, whether they would follow it out or not. If he saw a young person following the means who had signs of the work of the Holy Spirit within, his tendency was to nurse that person in the spirit of the Gospel. On the other hand he could be sharp in his rebuke to Sabbath breakers and others, and especially to ungodly men in ministerial garb, many of whom he came in contact with in the city; such as a professed minister carrying a newspaper in his hand on the Lord’s Day.
After his retirement in the year 1939 he removed from Glasgow to Lochcarron, where he had bought a house some years before. He was admitted as an elder in the congregation of Lochcarron in June, 1941. In Lochcarron he was a frequent visitor at the bedside of the sick, the dying, and the aged, who appreciated his visits and looked forward to his coming again. During the vacancy there he, as a rule, and so long as he was able, kept the evening service there, and those services were much appreciated by the people. He had a good command of both the Gaelic and the English languages and could keep the attention of his hearers, especially when his addresses, as they were wont to be, were interspersed with useful anecdotes. He was also a good leader of the praise in the sanctuary, having a strong and melodious voice. Since he retired he was free to attend communions more frequently, and he was often at these solemn gatherings in the Outer Isles, and on the mainland, with an occasional visit to Glasgow, so that his removal is not only a loss to Lochcarron but to other congregations which he visited.
He was a strong, healthy man, and very much concealed his age. We could almost say of him, as is said of Moses, that “his eye was not dim, nor his natural force abated,” until a year or two before his end, when he gradually began to lose strength. His end came on the 4th day of February of this year (1955), having passed his 80th year. We saw him three days before he died. He was very weak then. We asked him if he was supported by any portion of Scripture, and he quoted in a broken way the words of Is. xliii. 25: “I, even I, am he that blotteth out thy transgressions for mine own sake, and will not remember thy sins,” and part of John vi. 37: “And him that cometh unto me, I will in no wise cast out.” We had to constitute the Kirk Session at his bedside that evening in order to appoint a congregational meeting to arrange to call a minister, otherwise we would not have a quorum, as one of the elders was from home. This was the last part he took in a Church court. The last words he was heard to utter was from the metrical version of Ps. xxv: “The Lord is good and gracious.” His wife died a number of years before him. He also lost a son who died in his teens. Two sons and three daughters are left for whom many a prayer was made, we believe. Peter, the youngest son, with his wife, lovingly ministered to his wants during his illness.—A. B.
“Impatience complains of divine delays, but in very deed the Lord is not slack concerning His promise. Man’s haste is often folly, but God’s apparent delays are ever wise; and, when rightly viewed, are no delays at all.”—C. H. Spurgeon.