THE Southern Presbytery of the Free Presbyterian Church of Scotland would put on record its deep sense of the great loss sustained through the sudden removal of the late Rev. John Tallach, Oban.
Though he had been in failing health for a number of years, yet the end was somewhat unexpected (being only ill from Friday to the following Sabbath), and the sad news came as a great shock to relatives, friends, and to the Church as a whole, at home and abroad.
Mr. Tallach was born in Dornoch, Sutherland, in 1890, and was privileged above many in that he was brought up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. While still a young man about 21 years of age he removed to Tain, where he was employed in business. It was while here that he came under the power of the truth in a saving way. Having experienced the blessedness of gospel peace in his own soul, his mind became greatly exercised with thoughts of missionary work. Later he communicated these thoughts to the late Rev. D. Beaton, Wick, and expressed a desire to labour in the foreign field. By that time the Free Presbyterian Mission, at Ingwenya, Southern Rhodesia, was well established under the direction of the Rev. J. B. Radasi, and Mr. Beaton informed Mr. Tallach that the Synod had been discussing the advisability of sending out an ordained missionary from home to assist in the work. However, the 1914-18 war intervened, and Mr. Tallach joined the 4th Seaforths and served with them in France until the cessation of hostilities.
On demobilisation in 1919 Mr. Tallach felt called of God to the ministry of the gospel and his heart more firmly than ever set on labour in the mission field. He was accepted as a student of the Church with a view to foreign mission work.
After studying at Glasgow University, and after a course of divinity at Wick, he was licensed as a preacher of the gospel, and ordained to our Ingwenya Mission in South Africa in 1924, where he laboured for 22 years.
Just at the time he arrived in Africa, Rev. John Radasi, our former missionary there, had passed away, we believe, to be for ever with the Lord.
It must have been a very trying experience for Mr. Tallach to have found himself in a strange land without friends and amongst a people of language strange. However, he was able by divine help to overcome those difficulties, and the following year he was married to one who proved a real helpmeet—a daughter of the late Rev. J. S. Sinclair.
In 1946 he felt that his health was giving way and that it would be wiser if a younger man would take over the work at Ingwenya. In September of that year he came back to Scotland, and two years later he was inducted to the Oban congregation, where he laboured acceptably until his death.
His congregation mourns the loss of a pastor who had their everlasting welfare at heart—one who was always ready to help and to sympathise. His brethren feel the cause of Christ is much the poorer by his death, but they believe what the Apostle Paul had to say concerning himself was applicable to Mr. Tallach, viz.: “For me to live is Christ and to die is gain.”
The Presbytery would express their profound sympathy with his bereaved widow and family in their great loss, and also with his brothers and sisters.
May the God of all grace be a source of consolation to them all.—D. J. MATHESON, Clerk of Presbytery.