Mr Roderick MacLeod, Deacon, Stornoway
THE subject of this brief obituary was born in Swordale, Point, Isle of Lewis, in 1900. His mother was a communicant member and his father, although he never made a public profession, was a morally upright man and highly respected in the community. Roderick was thus brought up in a home where by precept and example he was taught the way that he ought to walk if he was to glorify God and enjoy him forever. As has so often been the case, many years were to pass by before it became evident that parental guidance given at a tender age had not been given in vain.
At an early age he left home. He was wont to tell of how his mother placed a Bible in his bag within which she had placed a ten-shilling note. On his return home she was to discover to her sorrow that the note was exactly where she had placed it an indication that her son had not even as much as opened it in the interval. Not only was the Bible neglected by Roderick, he was wont to confess that were it not for the love and respect which he had for his mother he would have thrown it away. But that was to change, even if after the lapse of many years, and the Bible came to be esteemed by him his most precious possession. In his old age the worn appearance of the copy which lay beside him bore ample testimony to that.
While only yet sixteen years of age he was found experiencing the horrors of war. By then a seaman on a naval ship, he was to be saved from certain death in a most remarkable way. The ship was torpedoed and in the explosion he was severely wounded. A spike had pierced his skull transfixing him in such a way that he was left for dead on the ship’s deck when it was abandoned by the surviving members of the crew. When drawing away from the fast sinking ship someone in the lifeboat noticed that the ship’s cat had been left behind and it was decided to go back for it. The man who jumped on board to lay hold of the cat, in passing by what was thought to be the dead body of young Roderick, noticed some sign of life in him and the outcome was that he was taken on board the lifeboat and survived to reach a hospital where surgeons were able to save his life. He recovered, but the marvellous deliverance from death which had been granted him does not seem to have had any effect upon him as far as his spiritual state was concerned. That was the first of three narrow escapes.
After the war he emigrated to Canada and was for some time in the employment of one of the contractors responsible for building the Canadian Pacific railway. He was also working as a labourer on the construction of the Welland canal and it was while there that he experienced his second narrow escape from death. While working in a rock cutting a blast went off either prematurely, or as a result of delayed action. The man working beside him was killed instantly while he, apart from suffering concussion, remained unscathed. It was in Canada that he met and married the woman and fellow-islander who was to be his helpmeet until she was removed by death in 1969. They returned to Lewis before the outbreak of World War II and Roderick was subsequently employed for the most part in one of the Stornoway Harris Tweed Mills. While in that employment he had his third narrow escape from death. A bale of wool slipped from the back of a lorry and he fell with it and it was again his skull that bore the impact. This time he was unconscious for sixteen days but he survived. It was some time after that that he began to show some concern for the salvation of his never-dying soul.
Up to that time he had not attended the means of grace anywhere. In fact he lived as one who made no secret of the fact that he had no interest whatever in the religion which he saw practised in his parental home. It was atheistic views which he was wont to express. How, and in what circumstances, he came to be awakened is not known. Moved by soul concern to attend some church, he chose to attend a service in a Stornoway Church of Scotland. It happened to be a communion Sabbath and his ignorance of what that meant was such that, on entering the building, he was completely at a loss to understand why it was that some of the pews were covered with white cloth! Thereafter he returned to the Church of his parents and became a regular attender on the means of grace under the ministry of the late Rev Donald Campbell. The spectacle of Ruairidh Ruadh’, as he was popularly known, attending church was one which caused no little amazement among neighbours and acquaintances. How, and exactly when, his soul was enlightened in the knowledge of Christ by the Spirit of God we are unable to say, but one had not to be very long in the company of Roderick to discover that that had taken place. He professed his faith in Christ publicly for the first time in August 1953.
He became well known as a Friday fellowship-meeting speaker at communion seasons throughout our congregations in the Western Isles. On such occasions he used illustrations which occasionally, it must be admitted, were not all that easy to follow, but which, at other times, were most striking and original. On one occasion he described in his own graphic, inimitable way how, in passing the mouth of a river, at the time of year when salmon ascend for spawning purposes, he noted that, notwithstanding the prolonged drought, none of them appeared disposed to go back down the river. There they remained with their faces up-river waiting, as it were patiently, and as if in hope that the rain would eventually come from heaven, which in turn would flood the river, and enable them to ascend to the next pool and the lochs beyond. He was, of course, thinking of the believer persevering in the means of grace. He, himself, was always, while physically able, present in his wonted place, and from the time of his ordination to the office of Deacon, his figure was familiar standing at the door of the Church. For years even in his eighties and often in inclement weather, he walked over two miles to open the doors of the Stornoway Church and to attend to the heating if need be. In prayer he was always brief, but sincere and earnest. On one occasion the writer said to him after a prayer meeting, in the course of which Roderick’s opening prayer had been very short, that he wished he had continued longer so as to reduce the length of the address which had to be given. His reply was that when they were children and hungry they did not like their father to continue long in saying the grace!
Towards the end his memory and physical strength began to fail so that his place in the house of God was no longer occupied.
Invariably, when the writer visited him in his home, he would, in the parting, quote in Gaelic the closing words of Psalm 133:
“As Hermon’s dew, the dew that doth
on Sion’ hills descend:
For there the blessing God commands,
life that shall never end.”
On 27th May, 1994, he departed this life to take his place, we believe, in glory among the spirits of just men made perfect.
His grandson and his wife dutifully and lovingly took care of him in his declining years and on to the end. To them we again offer our sympathy. May his God be their God also, and their Guide even unto death.
John MacLeod