Mrs. MacInnes, Kyle-Scalpay, Harris, was a true friend of the cause of Christ and by heart experience knew what “fervent love” to the Lord’s people is. She was not of those (very common in our day) who, “having a form of godliness, deny the power thereof.” We read in the Word of God of godly women who “came very early in the morning when it was yet dark unto the sepulchre.” Her love to Christ and the Means of Grace constrained Mrs. MacInnes to rise early on Sabbath morning and, after attending to the needs of a large family, to walk a long distance to the public worship of God. She was not one of those who absent themselves from the morning service on the Lord’s Day with the lame excuse that they have to prepare dinner for the family.
“Then they that feared the Lord spoke often one to another,” Malachi 3, 16. It could be said of her that she feared the Lord above many and that she delighted in spiritual conversation with the people of God. According to the promise in John 16, 33, “In the world ye shall have tribulation but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world,” she had her share of the trials of the wilderness. Her husband was taken from her by death, and afterwards her young son was lost during the Second World War. With Christian patience and reconciliation to the Will of God, she ran “the race set before her looking unto Jesus the author and finisher of her faith.” The nature of her religion was that defined by a saint of old when he said that “religion does not consist in mere feeling but in a patient, plodding, perpetual, painstaking, persevering life of obedience to the Will of God.”
She lived to see, with much rejoicing, one of her sons as a preacher of the Gospel in our Free Presbyterian Home Mission. Her life and conversation testified that she was a warm friend of the godly men of Harris who stood with the late Revs. D. Macfarlane and D. Macdonald on the side of Truth in our beloved Scotland in 1893. As a token of her love to the Cause of Christ she bequeathed of the little she had of this world’s riches £20 to the funds of the Free Presbyterian Church. She was not of the rich of this world who despise Christ, but she was of the “poor of this world rich in faith,” and her heart-theme was “Christ, although He was rich, yet for your sakes He became poor that ye through His poverty might be rich.” Though for some time before the end her memory was very much impaired as to the things of the world, we could easily notice that her mind was exercised in the Truth. At times she would say softly to herself, “Repentance and forgiveness of sins.”
This warm-hearted friend of the Cause passed, we believe, to her everlasting rest on the 5th day of May, 1956, at the ripe age of 90 years. Her remains are at rest in the sands of Luskintyre Cemetery waiting for a glorious resurrection when “this corruptible shall have put on incorruption, and this mortal shall have put on immortality; and then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written, Death is swallowed up in victory. O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?”—I Cor. 15, 54, 55.
To her sons and daughters, who witnessed in the life of their godly mother what real godliness is, we extend our sincere sympathy. A.McK.
The days of our years are three score years and ten; and if by reason of strength they be fourscore years, yet is their strength labour and sorrow (Ps. 90, v. 10).
Searmonan.
LEIS AN URR. TEARLACH C. MAC AN TOISICH, D.D.