By the passing of Mrs Mary MacPherson at the age of 81, a great blank has been made both in the Gisborne congregation and in the Cause in New Zealand. Mrs MacPherson was the third daughter of the late Mr James Campbell, builder, Inverness, who for many years was an elder in the Inverness congregation, and whose home in Ardross Place was a haven of rest and hospitality to the Lord’s people not only at communion seasons but throughout the year. Her worthy mother was one of the MacIvers of Strathconon, of whom not a few were eminent in godliness in their day and generation. Mrs MacPherson often spoke of the worthies — fathers and mothers in Israel whom she met in her old home. It was her father who published, about the year 1930, two volumes of the Sermons and Lectures of the renowned Rev. Lachlan MacKenzie, Lochcarron, who died in 1819. Educated at the Inverness Royal Academy, where she was both the English and Maths Medallist, she trained for the teaching profession in Aberdeen and taught first in Glasgow, and then in Melvaig in the parish of Gairloch. In the year 1919 she was married in the Free Presbyterian Church, Inverness, to Mr Murdo MacPherson a native of Diabeg, Torridon, who had been serving in the New Zealand Forces during the war. In 1920 Mrs MacPherson followed her husband to New Zealand, who had emigrated earlier and had set up a home in Tokomaru Bay, north of Gisborne, where he prospered as a sheepfarmer. They were blessed with a family of six sons and four daughters. At her death Mrs MacPherson was survived by three sons, four daughters, fifty-four grandchildren and six great-grandchildren.
While in Tokomaru Bay Mr and Mrs MacPherson had two bereavements in their family circle, John an infant son, the youngest of the family, and Duncan their fifth son, who died of cancer at the age of 22 in 1949. In connection with these sad breaches Mrs MacPherson used to tell how she found the Lord a ready help in the time of trouble, and was enabled to rejoice at His word, as one that findeth great spoil.
A few years after they had retired to Gisborne, Mrs MacPherson lost her beloved husband in June 1960. Mr MacPherson had been for a time in indifferent health. On the evening of his death he attended the prayer-meeting in the church as usual, where his melodious voice loud and clear could be heard in the singing. On the way home from the meeting he said to his wife that he was dying. Shortly after arriving home he passed away. One could not fail to be impressed by Mr MacPherson’s natural nobility of demeanour, his warm-heartedness and transparent integrity which earned for him the highest esteem of Maori and Pakeha alike. In January 1970 Mrs MacPherson’s fourth son, Campbell MacPherson, passed away suddenly at the age of 44, leaving a widow and six children. Campbell was a communicant member in the congregation. Shortly before he breathed his last, he said to his wife, “If this is death, I am happy to go.” Under these sad dispensations Mrs MacPherson again showed a gracious resignation to the Divine will.
It was under the preaching of the late Rev. Ewen MacQueen, Inverness, that Mrs MacPherson a year or so before her marriage came under the power of the Truth, and from then on until she finished her course in this world, her life, walk and conversation evidenced that her trust was under the wings of the Lord God of Israel. In New Zealand Mrs MacPherson found herself a pelican in the wilderness. In this land of beauty and plenty there was, and still is, a famine, not a famine of bread, nor a thirst for water, but a famine of hearing the Word of the Lord preached in its purity. On one occasion when cast down in that connection, the words “Thine eyes shall see thy teachers” (Isaiah 30:20) came with power to her. At the time their fulfilment seemed most unlikely, but she lived to see them fulfilled, when the church deputies to Australia began to visit New Zealand, the first, in 1935, being the late Rev. J. P. MacQueen, then later on the late Rev. Donald Beaton, the late Rev. Finlay MacLeod, the late Rev. D. J. Matheson and the Rev. Donald MacLean, Glasgow. She also saw a minister settled in Gisborne in 1962 and one in Auckland in 1968.
In 1934 Mrs MacPherson went for a trip to Canada and Scotland. It was at the January communion in Inverness in 1935 that she came forward for the first time, strengthened and encouraged by the words “They that fear Thee will be glad when they see me; because I have hoped in thy word.” (Ps. 119:74). She was reticent about her spiritual experiences, but her letters and the diary which she kept reveal that she dwelt in the secret place of the Most High. Shortly before her death the rough copy of a letter written after the Halkirk communion in November 1934 was found among her papers, evidently written from her mother’s home in Inverness. In this letter she refers to sore trials she was passing through, but does not specify what these trials were. “I seemed for a time” she wrote “to be crushed under them. God was pleased to open the way for me to attend the communion services at Halkirk, where I found Christ very precious to my soul. He was pleased there to fulfil His promise to me that He would satisfy the longing soul, for I found my whole soul drawn out to Christ my Redeemer, when He was held up in the preaching as the suffering Saviour. The Question at the Fellowship Meeting on the Friday was, “My sheep hear my voice and I know them and they follow me”. (John 10:27). The men were giving marks of those whom they considered Christ’s true sheep and there I got the assurance that God had graciously chosen me as one of His sheep. It was indeed a time to be remembered by me. I felt my heart drawn out and filled with praise and thanksgiving to Him who loved me and washed me in His own blood. Since coming home I find the carnal mind such a trial to me.”
The following entry dated January 1935 appears in her diary. “Lord, to whom can we go but unto Thee. Thou hast the words of eternal life. Lord call me as Thou didst call the fishermen by the sea of Galilee — they left all and followed Thee. My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me. Oh draw me and I shall run after Thee. Choose me as one of Thy sheep. Bring me into Thy fold that I may go in and out and find pasture. Keep me near to Thyself, O Shepherd of the sheep, Thou who didst lay down Thy life for Thy sheep. ‘I am the door’ by Me if any man enter in he shall be saved and shall go in and out and find pasture.’ Oh Lord deliver me from trying to climb in some other way, but grant me true and saving faith in Christ who is the way, the truth and the life. ‘I am come that they might have life’. Quicken me to newness of life. Oh merciful Shepherd, put thy Holy Spirit into my heart so that I may be enabled to cry Abba Father. Oh, I am a wandering, wilful, wayward sheep. I have turned my back and forsaken Thee. I have wandered further and further away from Thee. It is of Thy mercies that I am not consumed — that Thou didst not leave me to myself to wander and to be dashed to pieces on the rocks of unbelief and error and sin. Unless Thou Thyself hadst sought me out and not forsaken me as Thou didst promise graciously many years ago, I should indeed have perished eternally. Oh what a merciful and longsuffering Jehovah Thou art in that Thou hast brought me back to my right mind to a certain extent at any rate, to see the error of my ways and doings that are not good. I have sinned very grievously. Oh Lord, forgive my sin for the sake of Thy dear Son who gave Himself a ransom for His own sheep that He might bring them to God. ‘I give unto them eternal life and they shall never perish neither shall any man pluck them out of my hands’. Oh, enable me to believe that previous promise. Thou art the eternal and almighty God and Saviour. ‘I and my Father are one’. O Lord enable me to trust in Thee, for Thou art mighty to save. No man or devil can prevail against Thee and why should I doubt Thy power to save. ‘I came to seek and to save that which was lost’. Oh Lord I am lost in myself, but Thou canst seek and save. I have wandered far astray and unless Thou by Thy mighty power will prevent it, I will wander again, for I am such a rebel by nature. Oh, most Holy One, although at present Thou art making me to lie down in green pastures and leading me beside the still waters yet Thou knowest that I have to go far away from all public means of grace and from all fellowship with Thy people. Thou knowest how my flesh and heart doth faint and fail at such a prospect — that I am afraid that I will wander out of the way and be lost. The way seems so dark before me, Oh lead me in the paths of righteousness for Thy name’s sake. Thy rod and Thy staff they comfort me. Even though it means using the rod to me Oh Lord, Oh keep me in the right path and give me to believe that Thou wilt not leave me to perish of starvation but that Thou wilt prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies. Give me to keep my eyes on Thee and to listen to Thy voice and to follow Thee, however hard and rough the path may be, though it may mean walking through the valley of the shadow of death. All this I ask in the name and for the sake of Thy dear Son Jesus Christ. Amen.”
It would appear that from the time of the Halkirk communion which she attended in November 1934 she kept up a regular correspondence with Miss Charlotte MacKay, Thurso. She valued Charlotte’s letters all of which were carefully kept by her. In a letter dated 11.12.34 from 38 Rose Street, Thurso, Charlotte wrote, “My dear Mrs MacPherson, I am thinking of you so often since I have had the pleasure of meeting you that I will be the better of writing you a few lines. How much we have to see of the goodness of the Most High in our communion seasons, should it be but the privilege of meeting with Christian friends. I have often mentioned a remark of Mr MacDonald, Shieldaig, the first time I saw him. A goodly number of friends gathered in the house where my brother lodged on the Wednesday night before the Gairloch communion, who had not met before. When Mr MacDonald prayed, one remark he made was, ‘what would make our meeting wonderful, reviving and refreshing, is that we would meet with Jesus’. And then he said, ‘There is such a thing as meeting with Jesus’. When leaving on Tuesday morning he again prayed. A remark he made was, ‘We are now parting but if we are united in Him there is no separation. When we part with Him it is there the separation is and we have nothing but the floods’. If we know in truth what it is to be united in Jesus there can be no separation”.
In another letter dated 16.2.35, Charlotte writes, “It is a cause for thankfulness that you were privileged to come and not only to be with your mother, but to meet so many brothers and sisters, many of whom you had not met before. There are some you do not part with once you meet them. I will be thinking on the words, ‘There shall be no more sea’. The promise to all His people is, ‘I will put my spirit within you’. That spirit unites as nothing else does. Seas do not separate. I had a programme made up for my return journey from Dingwall, so many I wished to see. It was otherwise ordered. I came straight home. So different are the Most High’s ways from ours. The wonder is that He doesn’t leave us to wander altogether in counsels of our own.” And the following from a letter dated 19.2.35 — “I will tell you a truth I have been thinking of today, ‘I will pray the Father and He shall give you another Comforter that He may abide with you forever’. Professing to be believers we ought to plead the promise. We are here pilgrims passing through a wilderness meeting and parting with those we love. Some have gone before, some still in the wilderness. But this is not our rest. We are fast going to eternity. If we had the Comforter with us, surely we ought to rejoice. It will be an eternal wonder that He should abide with such creatures as we are.” Charlotte’s last letter written in December 1945 some months before her death in August 1946 at the age of 34, contains the following — “I do not wonder although you miss your godly parents and other dear friends who are at their eternal rest. So many of my own friends have been taken home. The belief that they are in heaven seems to bring heaven nearer, although I little know what heaven is and thinking of it I was led to think of John 17:24 ‘That they may behold my glory’. What low thoughts we are ready to have of heaven! It is a long while since I have been to church, but He is not a wilderness to me. A godly man who lived in Strathy long ago in writing said, ‘I have the Bible always, the Holy Spirit sometimes and a few communicative spirits’. I have the Bible and it is becoming more precious to me the more I read it. What a wonderful prayer John 17:21 is! I am sending you a calendar. I get a number to send to friends. It is a kind of unity. There never was more need. The Accuser is busy. I hope it is with a purpose of love that we are so often under the rod. I heard the late Rev. Neil Cameron speak from Psalm 80 on the vine. One remark he made was, ‘If you are not grieved over the division of Reuben this day in Scotland, you are not worthy of the name of a Christian’.”
In 1966 Mrs MacPherson wrote an excellent missionary book — “The Life and Labours of an African Missionary” — the missionary being the late Rev. John B. Radasi, the first Free Presbyterian Missionary to Rhodesia. The book is largely compiled from Mr Radasi’s letters to the late Rev. Neil Cameron and the late Rev. J. R. MacKay, which appeared in the Free Presbyterian Magazine, and from Synod Reports. It runs into 128 pages and was printed by the Gisborne Herald Co. Ltd. This labour of love is an evidence of her interest in the Cause of Christ whose welfare and prosperity she prayed and laboured for. To the end of her life she longed and desired to see the ingathering of the Jews. In the words of the Westminster divines she prayed that the Jews be called, the fulness of the Gentiles brought in, and the church furnished with all Gospel-offices and ordinances, purged from corruption, and countenanced and maintained by the civil magistrate. (Larger Catechism Ch. 191).
Mrs MacPherson was a lady of a strong personality of vigour and firmness and yet of a winsome spirit. The Lord in the good ruling of His providence appointed the bounds of her habitation in New Zealand, where she was largely responsible for the establishing of the church in Gisborne, in which she was a tower of strength. She was a faithful witness on the side of the Truth, and when occasion required, she would write to the press in its defence. The strength of character gave weight to her rebukes which were free from rancour and given in love. It could be truly said of her that she loved the gates of Zion. Even when weak and infirm and hardly able to walk, she would be in her place in the public means on the Sabbath and at the prayer-meeting. She was latterly confined to bed, and lovingly nursed to the end by her daughter Molly. She had her own share of tribulation in this world, but on Sabbath morning the 9th July 1972, this worthy mother in Israel passed into the rest which remaineth to the people of God. The large number which attended her funeral of the church people from Auckland to Wellington, and people from the town and country, was proof of the esteem in which she was held. May the Lord repair the breaches in the walls of His Zion, comfort and bless her devoted family, her brothers in Scotland, Mr James Campbell, Inverness and Mr Donald Campbell, East Kilbride, and her sisters Mrs John Grant, Inverness, and Mrs Fraser, Toronto, Canada. “Blessed are the dead which die in the Lord from henceforth: yea, saith the spirit, that they may rest from their labours, and their works do follow them.” (Rev. 14:13).
W. M.
Christ left the bosom of God, and was clothed with flesh and our nature, that He might be a mass, a sea, and boundless river of visible, living, and breathing grace, swelling up to the highest banks of not only the habitable world, but the sides also of the heaven of heavens, to over-water men and angels.
Samuel Rutherford