By the Rev. James Kidd, D.D., Minister of Gilcomston Chapel, Aberdeen.
I feel myself advancing fast to the grave, and upon a back-look of past life, I can say in truth that God hath been very merciful to me: and now I leave my testimony to His providential care of me, from my infancy hitherto. He has given my heart’s desire to me in my standing in society, and I bless and praise Him for all; and am willing to lay down my professorship and my ministry, when He may please to call me to do so. I now bid adieu to the University, and to all things beneath the sun. Farewell, the sun, moon, and stars, which have guided my wanderings in this valley of tears: to you I acknowledge much assistance in all my attainments. Farewell, thou atmosphere, with thy clouds, and thy rains, and thy dews, thy hail and snow, and different breezes, which contributed so much to my life and comfort. Farewell, ye earth and sea, which have borne me from place to place, where Providence has ordered my lot, and with your productions have supported my bodily wants so often and so long. Ye
summers and winters, adieu.
Farewell, my native country, and every place where I have had my abode. Adieu, Aberdeen! may peace and prosperity for ever be in you. To all your inhabitants I bid farewell. Farewell, Marischal College and University, in which I have had the honour of a Chair so long. May Learning and True Religion flourish in you till the latest posterity. Adieu, ye members of the Senatus Academicus: may ye enjoy many years of health, peace, and prosperity. Farewell all ye who studied under my care; may you be useful, faithful, and successful ministers of the gospel.
Farewell, Chapel of Ease1, may peace be within thy walls: for my friends’ and brethren’s sake, peace be in thee, I say. Adieu ye eldership — ye heads of families — ye young. May the Lord in tender mercy bless all I have baptised, and all I have admitted to the Lord’s table for the first time, I follow all with my most earnest prayers as long as I live.
Farewell, ye little children in general all around, whom I have so often met in kindness, and saluted with my best wishes for your good.2 May all good be your portion, in this world and the next. My own children, I commit you to God, in life and in death. May He fulfil to you the promise — “When my father and my mother forsake me, then the Lord will take me up” (Psalm 27: 10). With mixed distress I leave you under the care of Him that is able to keep you from falling, and to present you faultless before the presence of His glory with exceeding joy. Farewell!
I bid adieu to my Library, and to my Bible, which has been my companion from my earliest days. I leave the volume, but I carry with me, as the ground of my sure hope, the contents found in Psalm 73: 23-28: “Nevertheless I am continually with thee; thou hast holden me by my right hand. Thou shalt guide me with Thy counsel, and afterwards receive me to glory. Whom have I in heaven but Thee? and there is none upon earth that I desire besides thee. My flesh and my heart faileth: but God is the strength of my heart and my portion for ever. For lo, they that are far from Thee shall perish: Thou hast destroyed all them that go a whoring from Thee. But it is good for me to draw near to God: I have put my trust in the Lord God that I may declare all Thy works.” John 14: 3 — “And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you unto myself: that where I am, there ye may be also.” Psalm 138: 7, 8 — “Though I walk in the midst of trouble, Thou wilt revive me, Thou shalt stretch forth Thine hand against the wrath of mine enemies, and Thy right hand shall save me. The Lord will perfect that which concerneth me: Thy mercy, O Lord, endureth for ever; forsake not the work of Thine own hands.” Psalm 23 — “The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.
He maketh me to lie down in green pastures. He leadeth me by the still waters. He restoreth my soul: He leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for His name’s sake. Yea, thou I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for Thou art with me: Thy rod and Thy staff they comfort me. Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies. Thou anointest my head with oil: my cup runneth over. Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of the Lord for ever.” These I take before God, as my dying support and comfort.
Farewell Time! Welcome Eternity! Farewell Earth! Welcome Heaven! Amen, and Amen.
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Gilcomston Chapel, where he preached.
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The children used to line up in a row when they saw the Doctor coming, and as he passed along he laid his hands on their heads and blessed them.
Short Gleanings
The Conflict Within
“For the good that I would I do not; but the evil which I would not, that I do.” (Rom. 7: 19). This is humbling, but a just, account of the Christian’s attainments in the present life, and is equally applicable to the strongest and to the weakest. The weakest need not say less, the strongest will hardly venture to say more. The Lord has given His people a desire and will, aiming at great things; without this they would be unworthy the name of Christians; but they cannot do as they would; their least desires are weak and ineffectual; not absolutely so, for He who works in them to will, enables them in a measure to do likewise, but in comparison with the mark at which they aim. So that, while they have great cause to be thankful for the desire He has given them, and for the degree in which it is answered, they have equal reason to be ashamed and abased under a sense of their continual defects, and the evil mixtures which taint and abase their best endeavours. — Newton.
Growth in Knowledge
“Then shall we know, if we follow on to know the Lord.” (Hosea 6: 3). The mysteries of Christ are not learned in a day. Some are in a good mood, maybe, and they will look into the Bible and read a chapter or two, and away they go for a week, and never practise it more; like some boys, if at school one day, truant all the week after. Is it any wonder such thrive not in knowledge? It is a good speech of one:- “The study of the
Word and the reading of it differs as much as the friendship of such who every day converse lovingly together doth from the acquaintance one hath with a stranger at an inn, or whom he salutes as he passeth by in the street.” If you will get knowledge indeed, you must not only salute the Word now and then, but walk with it, and enter into daily converse with it.
— Gurnall.
Difference between Justification and Sanctification
by Rev. Robert Trail
I shall add but two words of advice on this head, of the difference between justification and sanctification. Do not divide them. Do not confound them.
Firstly, Do not divide and separate them: no man can do so, but in dream and notion. Justification and sanctification God hath joined together, and no man can put them assunder.
They are everlastingly united together, and every one that is a partaker of either is a partaker of both. Secondly, Do not confound them. I am persuaded that one of the main causes of the disorder that is in the spirits and the conversation of the most part of Christians, lies in their confounding these two great blessings. They do not give them their proper place; they are not rightly exercised about them in their due sphere; therefore I shall offer a word or two of advice for preventing this confounding of them. When you are seeking justification, let there be no mind of sanctification, I mean as to any merit; but when you are seeking sanctification, have a good mind to justification. To make this matter plain to you; when you are seeking justification, you should have no thought of sanctification; the reason is, because justification is an act of pure grace, that we must betake ourselves to God for, as poor condemned sinners. If men will perplex us with qualifications, pray let it run this way, What is it that qualifies a sinner for justification? it is this only, that he must be a condemned sinner; God’s law must condemn him, and the man must come into God’s court with this sentence in his hand, “Lord, justify a poor sinner for Christ’s sake; the law hath condemned me, and sentenced me to hell, and thither I must go except gospel grace relieves me in Christ Jesus.” When I say that in seeking justification you should have no mind of sanctification, my meaning is only this, that when you come to plead at God’s bar for justification, do not dream of bringing your sanctification with
you: for it is altogether improper and impertinent at this court. Let men varnish their doctrines which way they will, and cover them what pretences they please, they do but murder souls, who pretend to advise them to bring something with them to God for the grace of justification. Bring thy sins with thee, and bring the curse of the law upon thy conscience, and lay these before the Lord, saying, “Lord, here is an undone sinner, have mercy upon me, for Christ’s sake:” there should be nothing else heard there but that. But when you come for sanctification, you have good reason to mind justification, for it flows from it. When you would try your justification, in God’s name try it by your sanctification, that is allowed you; the reason is, it is but a trying the tree by its fruit. If the question be, Am I a pardoned, forgiven, accepted sinner in the sight of God, through the righteousness of Christ? if that be the question, try it by your sanctification; for all who are justified by the grace of God in Christ Jesus, are also sanctified by the Spirit of God. Now sanctification being the work of God in us, is far more easily discernible than justification, which is an act of God about us. Justification is the sentence of a judge, but sanctification as you have heard, is a gracious work of God on the heart and soul of a poor sinner, and that may be more easily known: therefore try your justification by your sanctification. In short, they who bring sanctification as a title to their justification, they err the breadth of God’s whole heavens: and they who pretend to the blessing of justification, and cannot justify it by the practice of sanctification, do but deceive themselves. If any man, saith the apostle, abideth in him, he ought himself also so to walk, even as he walked, 1 John 2: 6. I would only add, it is the Spirit of God alone that can make the word of God, and the truths of it, powerful upon us; it is he alone that can let us into them, and make us know spiritually and savingly the great blessings of justification and sanctification; our acceptance with God through the righteousness of another, and our being adorned by the Spirit of God with a holiness of his own implanting in us. We must not make our holiness our righteousness, nor our righteousness our holiness; our righteousness belongs to another, and only the benefit of it accrues to us; our holiness is the work of the Spirit in us, and Christ is the root of both. He is the person we are justified by or through, and his Spirit is the root of all holiness in us; and both give us the possession of eternal life: justification, by the sentence of the judge, is the ground, and sanctification is that which makes us meet for it in his time and way.
A Table in the Wilderness
by Rev. J. A. Macdonald
Psalm 78: 19 poses the question — “Can God furnish a table in the wilderness?” This psalm itself is ample proof that the Lord indeed provided for his people in the wilderness when he sent bread from heaven and brought water from the rock. Despite this, how often did they grieve and provoke him with their unbelief. Fear not, people of God, saving faith can overcome unbelief.
This psalm which is the second longest in the Bible shows the loving care God has for His church. “In the day time he led them with a cloud, and all the night with a light of fire,” (verse 14). How bravely they followed their leader as if they were hearing Him saying, “I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee.” We are instructed as to the necessity of giving ear to what the Lord is saying to us at all times. We see how ill it fared with those who refused to listen to His commands, like the children of Ephraim who turned back in the day of battle. That was a day when their stand would have pleased and honoured God.
Oh, the wonderful accounts we have given in the Word of God to prove over and over again that nothing is impossible with God — to whom all power is given in heaven and on earth. The return of the prodigal son proves this beyond all doubt. His father was daily looking for this. When he saw him coming home he went out to meet him and falling on his neck kissed him — the kiss of reconciliation which he shall never forget. The father then ordered his filthy garments to be taken away and the “best robe” put on him. He then ordered the fatted calf to be killed. Oh, what a table in the wilderness this was going to be — a good example of the beautiful gospel table. The Holy Spirit had provided him with a spoonful out of the pot of the sweet honey of repentance and he longed for more and more of it. He saw on the table another pot — that of saving faith and this refreshed his soul. He also tasted some cups of assurance of faith for which he had longed. He then remembered that it is written: “For he the soul that longing is doth fully satisfy,” and he drank more and more of it for his soul’s comfort.
Oh, yes, yes, God can furnish a table in the wilderness, such as the table spread to feed thousands of which we read in Mark, chapter 8. His disciples doubted the matter and so asked Him: “From whence can a man satisfy these men with bread here in the wilderness?” He then asked them: “How many loaves have ye?” They said, “Seven”. Jesus then commanded
the people to sit down. When he had given thanks he gave the loaves to the disciples to give to the people. There in the wilderness where there had been no prospect of food, they ate and were satisfied. All this was the doing of the Lord and we believe they thanked God for His good and kind providence.
There is a lovely parable found in Matthew 22 and it is a clear proof that nothing is impossible with God. It begins by telling of a certain king who made a marriage feast for his son. Many were invited. Let us listen to the gracious invitation: “I have prepared my dinner, my oxen and my fatlings are killed and all things are now ready, come ye to the marriage” — what a table was spread there in the wilderness. But we are told that “they made light of it”. How sad! It is to be feared that to this day the vast majority make light of the invitations so freely offered on the gospel table.
You will remember the account given in the Bible of a very severe storm on the Sea of Adria. There Paul discovered, more than ever before, God’s infinite wisdom, strength, power and authority over all things. The swelling heavy seas broke the ship to pieces. It was feared that all on board would be lost. In the kind providence of the Lord all got safely to shore. “Some on planks and some on broken pieces of the ship.” Was this not a blessing from the table of providence? So sure will it be for all those whose names are written in the Lamb’s book of life. They shall all reach the shore of Immanuel’s land in safety and shall be received “with gladness great and mirth on every side.” “This is the doing of the Lord and wondrous in our eyes.”
There was a happy family in Bethany — Lazarus, Martha and Mary — who feared the Lord exceedingly. However, this did not prevent them from having their portion of the sorrows and sufferings of this world. We learn that Lazarus was sick and died and was buried. The sisters doubted not that all things were possible with the God of eternity. In the midst of their sorrow He assured them: “Thy brother shall rise again.”
Jesus asked: “Where have ye laid him?” He was invited to “come and see”. He then standing beside the grave commanded with authority: “Lazarus come forth” — and this he did immediately. The One who knoweth all things knew that Lazarus would yet sit at the table with Jesus and his people in this world. On the day of judgement and before the great white throne Jesus will say: “Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away” to be forever with Him whom they loved and served in this world.
Happy are the parents who will live to have the pleasure of seeing their offspring sitting at the Lord’s table in this world. Let us once more hear
what David says on the matter: “And with Thy likeness when I wake, I satisfied shall be.”
It was a deep sense you had of the love of God to poor perishing sinners, such as you felt yourself to be, that caused you to pray: “Draw me, and we will run after Thee.” Having tasted that the Lord is gracious, fresh desires began to arise in your heart to witness for Him by sitting at His table with His people who now, in the mercy of God, were counted dear to your heart. Before any person goes forward to the Lord’s table which He has spread in the world, they should examine themselves as to whether a saving change has taken place in their hearts by the effectual working of the Holy Spirit. If so, the Lord puts this duty upon them: “This do in remembrance of me.” That wonderful day when you were enabled to do that, you will never forget. Although many years have passed over our heads since we took that step, and we have met with many trials and sorrows in this world, we have never regretted taking that step of witnessing for the Lord at His table. It is an honour to be allowed to witness for Him at His table spread in the wilderness for His own blood-bought people. The late Rev. James MacLeod served the Lord’s table on that occasion. For my own part, I saw as if his face was shining like that of Moses as he spoke so touchingly from these words: “For they that needy are shall not forgotten be alway, the expectation of the poor shall not be lost for aye.” Ps. 9: 18. Oh, what a blessed day of the gospel that was as he went on to address the people at the table with much liberty from on high. I do not think there was a dry eye at the Lord’s table.
You will remember when the Lord Jesus Christ told the centurion that he would come and heal his servant. He fully believed it and so it came to pass. Matt. 8: 5. “Faithful is he that promised who will also do it.”
The late Rev. Malcolm Gillies often spoke about the angels in heaven veiling their faces before the great white throne and Him that sat upon it. The Church said of Him before: “My beloved is white and ruddy, the chiefest among ten thousand.” Is Christ all that to yourselves? my dear friends. If so, then you will know that He has set a table in the wilderness for you from which you have been fed to your everlasting blessing and good. You will use the language of the church when she said: “He is altogether lovely.” On another occasion we see her coming up through the wilderness leaning on her Beloved, who was to her such a precious Saviour that she prayed: “Set me as a seal upon thine heart, as a seal upon thine arm.” Song of Sol. 8: 6. How we should praise and bless the Lord for all the feasts he has provided for us in the wilderness of this world. You, too, will be praising Him for your deliverance when He raised you
and restored you from a bed of sickness or from the operating table, where the skill which he gave the surgeons was the means used for your recovery.
We recently met a new group of so-called Christians who never bother to give thanks to God after partaking of food. They would do well to study the word of God and note what was said to the lepers whom he had cured of that dread disease. By way of rebuke Jesus said: “Were not ten lepers cleansed, but where are the nine?” Only one had returned to give thanks to God.
When thinking of the provision made by the Lord on many different tables in the wilderness we cannot help but remember the heaven-sent words which the godly Rev. Donald Macfarlane placed on the table of the Assembly in 1893 when he made his stand for the truth of the gospel. Surely this was the doing of the Lord. What need we have of the Lord’s keeping until we close our eyes in death so that we may prove faithful to His cause in this backsliding day. “My grace is sufficient for thee: for my strength is made perfect in weakness.” II Cor 12: 9. His people have to say:
“My table thou hast furnished
in presence of my foes;
My head thou dost with oil anoint,
and my cup overflows.”
Met. Psalm 23: 5
Dear friends, follow you the Lord Jesus Christ as diligently as Ruth followed Naomi and let her prayer be yours: “Intreat me not to leave thee, to return from following after thee.” Ruth 1: 16. His door is open and His ear is open to your cry. “For he shall deliver the needy when he crieth; the poor also, and him that hath no helper.” Psalm 72: 12. Be of good courage for God is still saying: “Him that cometh unto Me, I will in no wise cast out.” John 6: 37.
The Last Days of John Knox
Knox is often remembered today only because of his strength of character. Yet if, in the words of Regent Morton, he was “one who never feared the face of man”, it was because he believed: “I am not master of myself, but bound to obey Him who commanded me to speak plainly and to flatter no flesh on the face of this earth.” In the opinion of the great Reformation historian, Merle d’Aubigné, Knox was probably the most eminent Christian in the Reformed Church after Calvin. His eminent, yet humble, godliness comes out particularly clearly in the closing scenes of his life as recorded below. This article is based on Thomas M’Crie’s Life of John Knox, now reprinted by Free Presbyterian Publications (216 pages, large paperback, £5.95). Although a number of biographies of Knox have been published over the years, none have ever approached M’Crie’s Life for its spiritual understanding of this giant among Scotland’s Reformers. B. B. Warfield called the book “a worthy biography of Scotland’s great Reformer”. And William Cunningham referred to the author as someone
who “exhibited the finest combination of learning and judgement”. Scotland’s debt to the reformation and to John Knox in particular, should never be forgotten, and there is no better way of preventing such forgetfulness than by reading M’Crie’s book. K. D. M.
Since the time when he had been a slave on the French galleys, Knox’s health had never been robust. At last, in 1570, when Knox was about the age of 56, he had a serious stroke. He soon recovered his power of speech and was able, at least on Sabbaths, to preach again, but for the remaining two years for which he was spared in this life he suffered from serious physical weakness. It was during this period that James Melville, another of God’s special gifts to the Scottish Church and at that time a student in St Andrews, was relishing Knox’s lectures on the prophecies of Daniel. “Of all the benefits I had that year,” wrote Melville of 1571, “was the coming of the most notable prophet of our nation, Mr John Knox, to St Andrews.” “I saw him,” Melville went on, “every day of his doctrine, go . . . a staff in the one hand, and good godly Richard Bannatyne, his servant, holding up the other oxter1, from the abbey to the parish kirk, and by the said Richard and another servant lifted up to the pulpit, where he behoved to lean at his first entry, but ere he had done with his sermon he was so active and vigorous that he was like to ding the pulpit in blads2 and fly out of it.”
Conscious of the weakness of his body, Knox was now, in his own words, “weary of the world” and “thirsting to depart”. When publishing one of his religious letters, he wrote in the dedication, “John Knox, the servant of Jesus Christ, now weary of the world and daily looking for the dissolution of this my earthly tabernacle, to the faithful that God in his mercy shall appoint to fight after me”. And he concluded by saying, “Call for me, dear brethren, that God in His mercy will please to put (an) end to my long and painful battle. For now being unable to fight, as God sometimes gave strength, I thirst (for) an end, before I be more troublesome to the faithful. And yet, Lord, let my desire be moderated by Thy Holy Spirit.”
To the dedication Knox added in a prayer: “To Thee, O Lord, I commend my spirit. For I thirst to be resolved from this body of sin and am assured that I shall rise again in glory, howsoever it be that the wicked for a time shall tread me and others thy servants under their feet. Be merciful, O Lord, unto the Kirk within this realm; continue with it the light of Thy evangel; augment the number of true preachers. And let Thy merciful providence look upon my desolate bedfellow, the fruit of her bosom, and my two dear children, Nathanael and Eleazer. Now, Lord, put (an)
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Armpit.
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Beat the pulpit in pieces.
end to my misery.”
During Knox’s absence from his ministry in St Giles, his colleague John Craig had left Edinburgh to labour in another part of the country. In his place it was decided to call James Lawson from Aberdeen to be Knox’s colleague and successor. In this connection Knox wrote to Lawson, “All worldly strength, yea even in things spiritual, decays, and yet shall never the work of God decay. Beloved brother, seeing that God of His mercy, far above my expectation, has called me once again to Edinburgh, and yet that I feel nature so decayed, and daily to decay, that I look not for a long continuance of my battle, I would gladly once discharge my conscience into your bosom, and into the bosom of others, in whom I think the fear of God remains. If I had had the ability of body, I should not have put you to the pain which I now require you, that is, once to visit me that we may confer together of heavenly things, for into earth there is no stability except the Kirk of Jesus Christ, ever fighting under the cross, to whose mighty protection I heartily commit you.” And as a postscript he added the words, “Haste, brother, lest you come too late.”
Lawson duly accepted the call, and he succeeded in reaching Edinburgh before it was too late to see Knox. Indeed Knox was able to preach at his induction. Then, after addressing both pastor and congregation as to their duties, he protested as in the presence of God, before whom he expected soon to appear, that he had walked among his congregation with good conscience, preaching the gospel of Jesus Christ in all sincerity, not studying to please men or to gratify his own affections. He praised God that He had been pleased to give them a pastor in his room, when he was unable to teach. (In fact, this was the last time he came out of his house). He prayed fervently that any gifts which had been conferred on himself might be augmented a thousandfold in his successor. And, very seriously and impressively, he exhorted and charged all present to adhere steadfast to the faith which they had professed.
Less than two months before Lawson’s induction, news of the St Bartholomew massacre in France reached Knox. It was a sore blow to him in any case, but especially because he knew personally some of those who were murdered, among them people of great godliness and learning. Besides, it meant that the Reformation in France ceased to be an effective force; in one week alone seventy thousand Protestants — men, women and children — lost their lives amid scenes of unbelievable cruelty. Knox summoned up his dwindling strength to warn from the pulpit of the vengeance of heaven against the King of France, who had ordered the massacre. He wished the French ambassador to tell his king that divine
vengeance would never leave either him or his house unless he would come to repentance, and that none of his descendants would enjoy the throne in peace.
Anxious to meet his elders and deacons, Knox called them to his home for a final farewell. They gathered in his room along with the minister of Leith. “The day now approaches,” Knox told them, “and is before the door, for which I have frequently and vehemently thirsted, when I shall be released from my great labours and innumerable sorrows and shall be with Christ. And now, God is my witness, whom I have served in spirit in the gospel of His Son, that I have taught nothing but the true and solid doctrine of the gospel of the Son of God, and have had it for my only object to instruct the ignorant, to confirm the faithful and the distressed by the promises of grace, and to fight against the proud and rebellious by the divine threatenings.
“I know that many have frequently and loudly complained, and do yet complain, of my too great severity, but God knows that my mind was always void of hatred against the persons of those against whom I thundered the severest judgements. I cannot deny that I felt the severest abhorrence at the sins in which they indulged, but I still kept this one thing in view, that if possible I might gain them to the Lord. What influenced me to utter whatever the Lord put into my mouth so boldly, without respect of persons, was a reverential fear of my God, who called, and of His grace appointed, me to be a steward of the divine mysteries, and a belief that He will demand an account of the discharge of the trust committed unto me, when I shall stand before His tribunal . . .
“In the meantime, dearest brethren, do you persevere in the eternal truth of the gospel; wait diligently on the flock over which the Lord hath set you, and which He hath redeemed with the blood of His only begotten Son. And thou my brother Lawson, fight the good fight and do the work of the Lord joyfully and resolutely. The Lord from on high bless you and the whole Church of Edinburgh, against whom, as long as they persevere in the word of truth which they have heard of me, the gates of hell shall not prevail.” Knox was exhausted after speaking; the others were filled with a mixture of joy and sorrow. In that spirit they prayed and parted.
On the day before Knox died he told Bannatyne, “I have been these two last nights in meditation on the troubled state of the Church of God, the spouse of Jesus Christ, despised of the world, but precious in the sight of God. I have called to God for her, and have committed her to her Head, Jesus Christ. I have fought against spiritual wickedness in heavenly places and have prevailed. I have been in heaven and have possession. I have
tasted of heavenly joys where presently I am.”
Because he had difficulty in breathing, someone asked Knox if he felt much pain. His answer was that he was willing to lie there for years if God so pleased, and if He continued to shine on his soul through Jesus Christ. He seemed to be asleep, but off and on he was preaching and praying aloud. “Live in Christ,” he was heard to say, “and then the flesh need not fear death.” And his petitions continued, “Lord, grant true pastors to Thy Church, that purity of doctrine may be retained. Restore peace to this commonwealth, with godly rulers and magistrates.” Some time later he lifted his hands towards heaven and said, “Lord, I commend my spirit, soul and body and all into Thy hands. Thou knowest, O Lord, my troubles; I do not murmur against Thee.”
When struck by increased weakness Knox had told his wife and Richard Bannatyne that he wished one of them to read to him each day John 17, Isaiah 53 and a chapter from the Epistle to the Ephesians. He also asked at various times to have particular Psalms read to him and some of Calvin’s sermons on Ephesians in French. On his last day in this world he asked his wife to read to him 1 Corinthians 1. When she had done so he said to her, “Is not that a comfortable chapter? O what sweet and salutary consolation the Lord hath afforded me from this chapter!” Then about 5 o’clock on that 24th of November, 1572 he again asked his wife to read to him. “Go read where I first cast my anchor,” he told her. So, probably for the last time, he heard read the 17th chapter of John. And then she read to him once more from the sermons of his old friend and colleague, John Calvin.
After a sleep that evening he was asked why he was sighing so deeply. He replied, “I have formerly during my frail life, sustained many contests and many assaults of Satan, but at present that roaring lion hath assailed me most furiously, and put forth all his strength to devour and make an end of me at once. Often before hath he placed all my sins before mine eyes, often tempted me to despair, often endeavoured to ensnare me by the allurements of the world; but with these weapons, broken by the sword of the Spirit, the Word of God, he could not prevail. Now he has attacked me in another way; the cunning serpent has laboured to persuade me that I have merited heaven and eternal blessedness by the faithful discharge of my ministry. But blessed be God, who has enabled me to beat down and quench his fiery dart by suggesting to me such passages of Scripture as these, ‘What hast thou that thou hast not received?’, ‘By the grace of God, I am what I am’, ‘Not I, but the grace of God in me.’ Being thus vanquished, he left me. Wherefore I give thanks to my God
through Jesus Christ, who was pleased to give me the victory, and I am persuaded that the tempter shall not again attack me, but within a short time I shall without any great bodily pain or anguish of mind, exchange this mortal and miserable life for a blessed immortality through Jesus Christ.”
After family worship they asked Knox if he had heard. “Would to God,” he answered, “that you and all men had heard them as I have heard them. I praise God for that heavenly sound.” About an hour later he said, “Now it is come.” Richard Bannatyne went over to him and counselled him to think on those comforting promises of the Saviour Jesus Christ which he had so often declared to others. At once he realised that Knox had lost the power of speech, so he asked him to give a sign that he was hearing and that he was dying in peace. Knox lifted one hand, sighed twice and died peacefully. One of Scotland’s greatest sons had passed to the eternal blessedness of heaven, there to receive the reward of his faithful labours.