The late Rev. D. N. MacLeod
(Continued from page 312)
After referring to certain hardships that were peculiar to those serving on the Mission field he went on to speak of particular hardships which those who laboured in the home country had to meet with: “These hardships are, to mention one or two of them, first, the sad fact of having to preach the gospel of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ year in and year out, from one Sabbath to another without seeing any fruits . . . The man in the pulpit . . . feels that he has been endeavouring in the strength of grace to proclaim the gospel of salvation; to offer that salvation freely to whosoever is willing to accept it, and to present to sinners the most glorious Person of all persons in heaven and on earth — after that, to have to leave the pulpit with the feeling that all that has been in vain, fruitless; that sinners have listened, and attentively listened, have worshipped orderly; but it is a matter of striking their ears and the Word rebounding from their ears to oneself . . . There is again . . . the people . . . now turning their backs upon the House of God and the House of Prayer, preferring to spend the Sabbath Day at home, or if not at home, abroad on the road and on the streets and leaving the House of God almost empty . . . There are, if they cared to take the trouble, what would comfortably fill our Houses of Prayer at all the services on Sabbath and week-day.
Knowing that, and yet having to stand and speak to empty pews is a hardship that one cannot really find words to express. The only consolation is this — at least, I think it is the only consolation — that it is known to the Lord Himself. It is known to Him why His house is so empty as well as what those who should be there are doing when absent from it. He knows also the grief it causes His servants and He knows how hard it is upon them to bear it. They may well rest assured that they have His full sympathy, and having His full sympathy, that goes a long way towards meeting the hardship of it and enabling them to bear it and to persevere in their work. But, if things go on as they are, (and they will go on as far as men are concerned), let us not be so foolish as to look to men as though the remedy is to come from men . . . The remedy must come from above; must come from the Lord. As the Forerunner said: ‘A man can receive nothing, except it be given him from heaven.’ This must come from heaven; it must come from the Lord who sits at His right hand . . . We must just do as the Psalmist did in the strength of His grace: lift our eyes to the hills whence cometh our aid; lift our eyes heavenward and set them upon Himself and plead earnestly with Him that He would arise again according to His promise which He has been pleased to fulfil more than once: ‘Thou shalt arise and mercy have upon Thy Sion yet.’ And in confirmation of that, we have this, ‘Thou shalt make His soul an offering for sin; He shall see his seed, He shall prolong His days and the pleasure of the Lord shall prosper in His hand.’ Let us not be despondent after all. Let us not be disheartened; let not our hands be weakened; but let us be strong in His grace and confide in Him and keep our eye on that promise itself, with the full assurance that it shall be fulfilled in the letter and spirit of it, to the extent that the day will come in which He will present His people as a whole before the Father, saying, ‘Behold me now and the children which Thou has given me’.”
It might well have become a rarity for a sinner to be awakened under the preaching of the Word but nevertheless from the Ullapool Free Presbyterian pulpit the same unchanging gospel which is the power of God unto salvation continued to be, over the years, uncompromisingly declared. The prevailing cry was for a more popular gospel; but there was not to be detected here any modification of gospel doctrines to make them more palatable to the world and more comfortable to the new and fashionable liberal views of men. But whatever Mr Macleod’s own feelings might have been, others can say that there were times even at the close of his public ministry when, under his preaching, the Lord’s people were enabled to rejoice with no small measure of that joy which is unspeakable and full of glory, while there were also occasions when careless sinners were made to tremble. A Sabbath evening in Ullapool comes to mind: His text was, “The wicked shall be turned into hell, and all the nations that forget God.” He began by saying that he laboured under the difficulty of hardly knowing how to add anything to words which were of themselves so unspeakably solemn. As far as pity and compassion for souls was concerned there never was, nor could there ever be, anyone to be compared to the tender-hearted Jesus of Nazareth and He, knowing the eternal world, spoke often of hell as a dreadful reality: it was from His lips that we have such awful expressions as, “Where their worm dieth not and the fire is not quenched.” With, it would seem, every ear in the congregation attentive to him, Mr Macleod went on to say that he was as sure of the existence of hell as he was of standing in the pulpit at that moment and was only endeavouring to do what his master had done before him — warn careless sinners of their danger of being eternally cast into it. One young woman in the assembly that evening was more visibly affected by the minister’s words than others around her and was observed to shed copious tears — a rare spectacle, for Mr Macleod was not one to play on the emotions — but alas! her goodness hitherto has proved itself to be no better than Ephraim’s, “as a morning cloud, and as the early dew it goeth away.” How often have such convictions been stifled by young sinners at the most impressionable time of their lives and in many cases never to return!
Mr Macleod continued to preach until the weakness and frailties incident to old age came to prevent him. If our memory serves us right his last appearance in the church was on a prayer meeting evening when he based his address on the words: “The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much.” From then on, for the remaining six years or so of his life, he was confined to his own home — prevented from waiting on God in the courts of His house, but not from waiting on Him at the throne of grace. Among the hidden things that shall be revealed hereafter, we believe, will be the fact that his own prayers — those of a righteous man — availed much, and were often answered in ways beyond our knowledge and understanding here. Although often heard lamenting his own leanness and barrenness we believe he was himself no stranger to the experience of having prayer answered, and that there were occasions during his life when he could wholeheartedly sing with David, “I love the Lord, because my voice and prayers he did hear.” In this connection one of our older ministers retains yet in his memory what he heard him say many years ago. “One of the most precious tokens of the Divine favour that a believer can receive in this world from the Lord is an answer to prayer.” To draw near to God was no light matter as far as he was concerned — he regarded himself as being then on holy ground — and the reverent manner in which he was wont to invoke the name of the Most High, especially in Gaelic will long be remembered by those who were accustomed to hear him do so. Some of the choicest expressions that were heard from his lips were heard when he was in the act of addressing God and seemed as if oblivious to the presence of men. With what feeling and unforgettable poignancy, for instance, would he often at family worship towards the end of his life pray for the “poor parish” of Lochbroom and, mourning the fact that the Saviour was so great a stranger in the land, would often give utterance to the words, “Lord, how long will thine absence last?” For “all in danger on land, sea, or in the air” he invariably prayed. When the tempest would rise in haste, the fishermen plying in and out of Ullapool were not forgotten and his voice would be lifted up on their behalf to the One who reigns even over the raging sea. In public it was at times noticeable that if the theme of his discourse was to be some aspect of the severity of God, then, in his opening prayer his mind would dwell on the goodness of God and his petitions would be framed accordingly. The opposite was also true. Another noticeable feature was that for a number of consecutive Sabbaths he would preach exclusively from texts with a bearing on the sterner aspects of the truth as for instance, the natural condition of man and his imminent danger of perishing in his sins; then, for an equal number of Sabbaths he would similarly lay the emphasis on the gospel provision so altogether suitable to meet man’s need. In the one case, to borrow the language of the well known anecdote, he seemed to go out with “a quiver of arrows;” in the other, with “a cruse of oil.”
(To be continued)