During the middle part of last century, the parish of Resolis was blessed with one of the most eminently useful and laborious ministers that the Church of Christ has ever seen. When the name of Mr Hector McPhail meets the eye of the more northern reader, it will recall to memory not a few of those striking anecdotes current among the older inhabitants of the district in which his labours were best known, and which may be stated generally as lying along the shores of the Beauly and Cromarty Firths. This remarkable man is said to have been awakened to spiritual concern after he had entered on the work of the ministry, and to have continued under deep distress for a period of no less than seven years, during three of which his mental sufferings were so great that he never knew what it was to have a night’s complete rest. While in this state of protracted anxiety — or, as the Gaelic people expressively term it, while under “law-work” — he made a solemn vow that should the Lord be pleased to grant him a sense of pardoning mercy, and clear views of his personal interest in Christ, he would never pass a sinner, with whom an opportunity for conversing should occur, without directing his attention to the great concerns of eternity, and urging upon his acceptance that Saviour whom he himself had found.
So religiously did Mr McPhail observe this vow, that his little white pony, the unfailing companion of his almost endless journeys, learned in no long time to halt of his own accord whenever it overtook a traveller; and not unfrequently, amid the bewildering darkness of night, as the icy blasts swept down from the hills over the wild solitudes of the Maol-bhui, did the sagacity of his four footed Highland bearer remind the faithful servant of Christ that a fellow-sinner was at hand, to whom he had pledged himself to deliver a Saviour’s message, and on whom he was bound to urge the acceptance of the Saviour’s love. With him the salvation of souls was a perfect passion, calling forth a self-denial and devotedness almost apostolic in its type. Not unfrequently has he been known to draw some Highland herd-boy to his side, and after leading his mind to the awful importance of divine things, to purchase, by the gift of a small sum of money, the boy’s promise to form habits of prayer in future — a method by which, he conceived, the youth was bound to implement his promise, according to the principles of common honesty, as well as by the sacredness of a solemn pledge. It is said that, on one occasion, when riding in the company of a brother minister, the travellers were over-taken, near Inverness, by the equipage of one of the Lords of Justiciary, who was to preside in the Circuit Court about to be held that day. Mr McPhail suggested to his brother minister that this might be a glorious opportunity of doing some spiritual good to an influential man of the world, and urged him to assist in improving the precious and unlooked-for moment. His companion, however, being most probably one of those rule and plummet ministers, whose favourite Scripture maxim is, “Let everything be done decently and in order,” was not carried away by his zeal beyond the bounds of propriety, and politely declined the invitation. But Mr McPhail had long learned to “be instant”, not only “in season,” but also “out of season;” so the willing propensities of the white pony were again put in requisition. Riding forward to the carriage, Mr McPhail respectfully addressed his Lordship, and, after a prefatory remark or two, reminded him that the proceedings in which the Court was to engage were emblematic of another judgment-seat, at which his Lordship must appear, not as a judge upon the bench, but as a panel at the bar; entreating him, at the same time, with respectful but affectionate earnestness, to weigh well the nature of his case, and to commit it in time into the hands of the great Advocate with the Father, who can never be an unsuccessful pleader, because Himself the propitiation for our sins. His Lordship appeared impressed with the address which he had heard, thanked Mr McPhail most warmly for his ministerial faithfulness, and invited him to become his guest at the close of the Court.
Many such anecdotes are told of this amiable and laborious man, and numerous were the instances in which these “out-of-season” efforts in his Master’s cause were savingly blessed to the souls which, “by any means,” he sought to win. Among the rest, the following is perhaps one of the most remarkable:—
The parish of Resolis is situated on the southern shore of the Firth of Cromarty, lying immediately to the east of the well-known Ferintosh. In order to reach it from the coast of Nairn, one would require to cross the Ferry of Fort George, and strike athwart the peninsular district known by the name of the Black Isle. After a journey of some eight or nine miles over an immense wilderness of the most dreary moorland, lying along the entire back of the peninsula, you reach the church and manse of Resolis, situated in a spot which has lately been rendered a little more civilized-looking than the desert around. At the period of our story, Fort George was garrisoned by an English regiment, which partook of the unusually profligate and debauched character of the British army at that time. As the neighbouring town of Campbeltown is at some distance from the Fort, wooden shambles had been erected close to the water’s edge, immediately below the garrison, to serve as a flesh market for the convenience of the military. Having occasion one day to travel homewards by the route which, for more than one purpose, we have described. Mr McPhail was detained for some time below the Fort by the delay of the ferry-boat, which had to be summoned over from the opposite side. While he was standing at the water’s edge, with his inseparable white companion, a soldier came into the shambles to purchase some meat, and asked the price of a quarter of mutton. The butcher named the sum. With a frightful oath, in which he pledged the everlasting salvation of his soul, the man refused to give the price, but ultimately, after a good deal of wrangling, agreed to the butcher’s terms and took up the meat to go away. All this while Mr McPhail, who was standing outside the shambles, overheard the conversation within, and, shocked at the awful jeopardy in which the soldier had placed his soul, was watching for an opportunity of addressing him upon the imminent danger of his condition. No sooner, therefore, had the man left the flesh market than Mr McPhail contrived to throw himself in his way, and to engage him in conversation.
“A fine day, soldier.”
“A fine day sir,” replied the man, touching his cap.
“Do you belong to the Fort?”
“Yes, sir, and a dull enough place it is; nothing but drill and the blues.”
“You are an Englishman, I see; what is your name?”
“Luke Heywood, your honour.”
“That seems a nice piece of mutton you have got.”
“So it is sir, and cheap too.”
“What did you give for it, may I ask?”
The soldier named the price.
“Oh! my friend” replied Mr McPhail, “you have given more than that.”
Luke Heywood looked astonished. “No, sir, I gave no more; there’s the man I bought it from, and he can tell you what it cost.”
“Pardon me, friend; you have given your immortal soul for it. You prayed that God might curse your soul if you gave the very price you have just named; and now what is to become of you?”
The ferry-boat was announced as ready, and Mr McPhail stepped on board; while Luke Heywood walked off with his purchase, and entered the Fort.
Throwing off his cap, he sat down upon a form in the barrack, and in a short time his reflections turned upon his conversation with the stranger at the ferry. The gentleman’s parting words were still fresh in his memory: “You have given your immortal soul for it; and now what is to become of you?” “Really,” thought he, “the stranger was quite right. I have a soul, though I had almost forgotten it, and I have pawned it for a bit of mutton too. Well, I didn’t mean that, but I have done it though; and now what is to become of me?” The thought, even to a profligate, was anything but an agreeable one, so he tried to banish the occurrence from his memory. But it would not do; conscience was at its work, and refused to still its voice. The words of the stranger were pealing in his ears like the death-knell of his soul: “You have given your immortal soul for it; and now what is to become of you?” In a perfect agony of terror he started from his seat, rushed bare-headed from the Fort, and arrived, all flushed and breathless, at the ferry in quest of Mr McPhail.
“Where is the gentleman?” cried Luke to the butcher.
“What gentleman?” inquired the other.
“The gentleman dressed in black clothes, and with a white pony, who told me that my soul was lost.”
“Oh! you mean Mr McPhail; he’s the minister of Resolis, and you will have to go far enough till you catch him, for he has crossed more than half-an-hour ago.”
The ferry-boat being about to make a second passage across the water, Luke Heywood entered it, with the design of following the stranger with whose words he had been so painfully impressed. Inquiring of the ferry-men the route he must follow, Luke leaped from the boat as it touched the point of Fortrose, and started afresh upon his intensely exciting pursuit. We know not the feelings of the agitated traveller as he rushed bare-headed through the little town of Rosemarkie, or toiled all flushed and heated across the weary solitudes of the Maol-bhui; we have not been informed regarding the astonishment of the shepherd or the cotter as an excited soldier hastily inquired whether he had seen anything of a clergyman upon a white pony — which was all the description he could give. He arrived, however, towards evening at the manse of Resolis, and on demanding eagerly to see Mr McPhail, was immediately admitted.
We know not how to reconcile the statement with the rules of military discipline, but so it was, that Luke remained at Resolis all that night and the two following days, during the greater part of which time he was closely closeted with the minister. Mr McPhail’s study was not a confessional, albeit many a poor soul had gone thither to ask counsel at the man of God; and if the walls of that little old room had but retained a transcript of the experiences of which the minister had been called to listen, how interesting the record they would now have presented of the spiritual difficulties which Mr McPhail had to meet — how useful to those who are entrusted with the same momentous office, and have the like responsible duties to fulfil! Numerous, however, and varied as were the spiritual cases on which this singularly godly man had been consulted, it may be questioned whether he had ever been called to deal with an experience such as Luke Heywood’s. His was, indeed, a rare case; for into those two short days was condensed, as to its leading facts, the history which, with Mr McPhail, had stretched over a period of more than seven years. “The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh and whither it goeth; so is every one that is born of the Spirit.” How strikingly was this passage illustrated within the study at Resolis as the minister and the soldier knelt down together on the evening of the second day! Both were extreme specimens of the two great modes of conversion — the gradual and the sudden. He whose voice you now hear uplifted in holy thanksgiving laboured for seven long and weary years under a “horror of great darkness,” unable to appropriate as his own the Saviour of sinners; while he who kneels beside him, and weeps with joy unspeakable over a newly-found peace of God, but two days ago was foremost in the ranks of profligacy; his curse was loudest and deepest; his revelry the wildest and most unbridled even amid the sottish jollity of the canteen; and yet of him it can be predicted just as certainly as of the other, that he is now “born of the Spirit.” Doubtless, the gradual method of conversion is the Spirit’s usual way; it is, if we may use the expression, more consistent with the structure of the human mind to adjust it by degrees to the exercise of a perfect faith, and to lead it through a course of careful anxious, all-absorbing inquiry, to the full realisation of a saving interest in the work of Christ; so that the progress from “grace in the blade” to “grace in the ear” may be very gradual and very slow. This, we repeat, is the Spirit’s usual way; and, for our own part, we are far more disposed to trust the depth and genuineness of the ordinary than of the extraordinary manifestations of a work of grace, in so far, at least, as this is to be judged of by its symptoms. But still it cannot be doubted, without doing great violence both to Scripture and observation, that there have been, and still are, cases in which the omnipotent Spirit of God has dispensed with the employment of ordinary means: and like the wind, which “bloweth as it listeth,” does not always breathe in soft and balmy zephyrs, but anon, though seldom, bursts forth with the fierceness of the tornado to annihilate, with almost lightning suddenness, every obstacle that would arrest its tempest path; even such is the unfettered agency of that free, sovereign Spirit, who will not only “have mercy on whom He will have mercy,” but who will also manifest His saving grace in whatever way He pleases. Both the minister and the soldier were, we have said, types of the two opposite methods of conversion; and as they knelt down together to offer up their parting prayer, might not each have felt how true were the words of one who had himself been changed like Luke Heywood, rather than like Mr McPhail, “There are diversities of operations, but it is the same God which worketh all in all?”
But we must leave Mr McPhail in the study of Resolis, and accompany Luke back to the garrison of Fort George. Happy we if we can join him in the “new song” with which he wakes the echoes of the moorland wilds on his way back through the Maol-bhui—
“He took me from a fearful pit,
And from the miry clay,
And on a rock He set my feet,
Establishing my way.”
Like the woman of Samaria, Luke Heywood now began to feel a love for the soul of others, and, with David, to say to his comrades, “Come, and I will tell you what God hath done for my soul.” The word was “as fire within his bones,” and he “could not but speak the things which he had seen and heard.” He accordingly began to hold small prayer-meetings in the barracks, and to expound the Scriptures to his fellow-soldiers. By degrees, however, the piety and zeal of the former profligate became known throughout the district; the people of God were amazed when they heard that, like Paul, he that had scoffed at them, “in times past, now preached the faith which once he destroyed; and they glorified God in him.” His prayer-meetings attracted others than the military, and the people began to flock from the neighbouring parishes to hear the expositions of this wonderful man. An old relation of the writer used to come down among the crowd from the parish of Ardclach, a distance of about sixteen miles from Fort George; and his informant was personally acquainted with a godly old schoolmaster who had been a fellow-soldier of Luke’s (and a very wild and thoughtless young man he was), but who, along with many others, owed his conversion to these prayer-meetings among the garrison.
But matters could not long continue thus without exciting the enmity and opposition of the ungodly. The captain of Luke’s company was particularly active in his hostility to these meetings, and often threatened the pious soldier with the lash. Sending for him on one occasion, he told him that he was going from the Fort that day, and added, with a tremendous oath, that if on his return he should hear that Luke had been holding any more of these conventicles, he would order him so many lashes. On hearing this intimation, Luke was silent for a few minutes; then looking at his officer, he replied, “Sir, if you ever return alive, God never spoke by me;” an answer almost identical with that of the prophet Micaiah to Ahab, “If thou return at all in peace, the Lord hath not spoken by me.” The issue proved that the Spirit of God was even then speaking by the lips of Luke. The captain and a brother officer went to shoot in the neighbourhood of Culloden, and as the former was crouching behind a hedge, in the act of watching the approach of some deer, his comrade (a younger brother of his own, as we have been informed), mistaking him for large game, took a hasty aim at the moving object, and shot him dead upon the spot.
The regiment was soon afterwards ordered to England, and it was reported that Luke purchased his discharge from the army, and became an eminently useful Dissenting minister. He ceased to be a soldier of King George, that he might become a soldier of the Cross; and we have no doubt that the walls of his meeting-house would often echo with the words, “I thank Jesus Christ our Lord, who hath enabled me, for that He counted me faithful, putting me into the ministry; who was before a blasphemer, and a persecutor, and injurious; but I obtained mercy because I did it ignorantly in unbelief.”